


Chaos and Confusion

by Speedy1236



Series: Triple Threat Novels [1]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games), Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Chaos Emeralds, Friendship, Gen, Team as Family, team sonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-22
Updated: 2010-10-22
Packaged: 2020-03-02 04:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 48,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18803995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Speedy1236/pseuds/Speedy1236
Summary: Chaos is power. Power creates and destroys. Now how could an opposite of it induce even more chaos? Sonic, Knuckles and Tails are about to find out. Meanwhile Robotnik plots with new old plans, and Rouge and Omega go on a quest to find a missing Shadow..





	1. Dawn

_\- Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds. -_   
_George Santayana_

* * *

**Dawn**

It was raining. Hard. The pavement of the street was covered by a film of slippery wetness. Very annoying on the long run, as annoying as the cold water drenching his fur, and the conditions weren't made any more enjoyable by his company.

Sonic cursed as he slid to the left, sidestepping through a group of robotic bodies. Barely missed by a shot of laser light, the blue hedgehog curled into a spin and came bounding down on the nearest machines. With a satisfying bang, the bots around him vanished from existence. The hedgehog turned around, only to jump and duck for cover. A small grenade zoomed over his head and exploded on hitting the wall of a small building. Sonic wasted just a second watching the black mark it left.

A second too much. He stiffened when a metallic hand grasped into his spikes and the robot it belonged to started to pull him closer. Sonic struggled, kicking the wet ground and trying to resist the force of the machine, but his feet had almost no purchase and right now the robot seemed to have an edge over him.

Metallic feet clamped on the pavement as a few more Eggrobos stepped up around the one that had grabbed the hedgehog, their hands holding small guns that didn't betray the strength of the laser they were able to emit. Sonic tensed in the robot's grip when the weapons were pointed at his chest.

"Now hedgehog, how do you think about that little deal right about now? Ready to negotiate with me?" Eggman's hovering vehicle slowly moved so Sonic could glimpse the scientist from the very edge of his vision.

Sonic shook his head and started another attempt to wriggle out of the robot's steel grip. "I told you already, I –" The hedgehog interrupted his speech when one of the machines surrounding him seized his feet to help hold him still.

Big mistake. Sonic's legs, able to push him to a top speed higher than the speed of sound, were powerful once they got good ground to move on and it mattered little if that was floor, walls or something else.

Like the chest armor of an Eggrobo.

Sonic kicked at the robot's hands that reached out for him, knocking it out of balance for a moment, planted his feet on the more or less flat torso of the machine and pushed for upwards-speed. His feet connected with the robot's face and its brow, sending it falling backwards, in the same time Sonic was turned head over heels.

The rapid and unexpected movement combined with the wetness of his blue fur was enough to make the robot lose its grip on him. Sonic's pushed off with his hands on its shoulders, back-flipping right over it, and landed smoothly on his feet.

Not wanting to give away the moment of surprise, Sonic directly leaped at the machines, curling up into a small ball of quills. Like a diamond saw he cut through the metallic bodies of his foes and stopped less than ten seconds later, for a moment standing still, surrounded by the small sounds of droplets of rain knocking on torn metal and plastic, quickly extinguishing the small flames that tried in vain to grow in charred circuits.

"Give it up Eggman, I smashed the last ones and I'll as certainly smash the next guys you send." Sonic wiped off the water running down his brow. "I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying the little party out here with you and your metal idiots. It's just pointless. I don't have any –"

"Stop babbling hedgehog and give me your Chaos Emerald!", Robotnik's voice bellowed from the small flying vehicle slightly above Sonic. The doctor was clearly upset.

Sonic gave an annoyed groan. "I don't have ANY Chaos Emeralds!", he shouted up at Eggman. "This is what I've been saying for three hours now!"

The blue hedgehog had run into Eggman more or less by chance this time. Or by bad luck. However you wanted to see it. Sonic had been bored anyway and so didn't really regret the possibility to get into a good fight. Well, the 'small fight' now lasted for three solid hours and, although too stubborn to admit, Sonic knew he was tiring. The good thing was Eggman seemed to be running out of robots to chase him. The last hours, consisting of Sonic zipping around too fast for the naked eye to see anything but a blue blur or leaping at the robots as a spinning ball of razor spikes, had taken their toll of the scientist's army of machines.

"You are not lying to me, hedgehog?" Dr. Eggman leaned half out of his flying vehicle.

Sonic rolled his eyes. "NO!" With the last sound of the word leaving his mouth, the hedgehog back-flipped straight into the chest of the slightly humanoid robot, in a way resembling his creator, that had sneaked up behind him while he had been talking to Eggman.

Robotnik watched the last fighting machine he had around here collapsing in a heap of junk and his fist slammed into the palm of the other hand. "Alright, I'll get my Chaos Emerald from elsewhere." He leaned forwards again, eyeing Sonic. "We'll meet again soon, you little annoying rodent, and then we'll see who's the one winning in the end."

Sonic casually crossed his arms on his chest. "Oh well. I think I've heard that one before. Do me a favor, will ya?" A broad grin of cockiness crept onto Sonic's wet face. "Before you come back for the revenge, build some robots that can take a bit more than these ones. Were lame."

"Aarrgggh! Just you wait, Sonic…"

The hedgehog turned around and ran off, hearing Robotnik's cursing echo through the rainy afternoon, but soon the sounds of splashing water out of almost black clouds swallowed up every other sound.

* * *

Behind a huge moustache a grin appeared on Ivo Robotnik's face. This was easy. For the laboratory of Mobius' best known university, this building had ridiculous security systems. He might as well have gotten the idea to get the Emerald they were keeping here earlier instead of messing with this stupid blue hedgehog the whole day long and losing ninety percent of his robots in the progress.

He took the violet jewel out of the glass box holding it and climbed back into his Eggmobile, with a smile ignoring the blaring alarm sirens in the big room when he left to return to his hidden base.

Only half an hour later, he entered one of his own labs with his new possession. Finally he had gotten his hand on an Emerald. He needed one to awaken the creature he was keeping here in suspended animation for weeks already, and it had always proved to be so useful. His last plans involving the idea of using these impressive powers for himself had led to nothing, but for once, that had not been caused by the nature of his plan, but by mere chance.

And a certain blue hedgehog, but this was not the time to bother about Sonic, as annoying as he might be. The thing at hand was far more interesting.

Robotnik inserted the Chaos Emerald into a console table and flicked a few switches. He slowly walked over to the glassy capsule as the Emerald started glowing. The creature twitched weakly, still not near a healthy condition, but it would be in a few days. Robotnik watched as droopy eyes opened halfway with a look of dazed confusion and the words came out as an almost inaudible whisper. "Where am I? Who are you?"

Robotnik winked one of his robots and the machine lifted the limp body out of the capsule. "Your friend. Don't worry. Relax."

Apparently the creature wanted to say more, but tiredness had already overwhelmed his senses and his lids sank down again.

Robotnik smiled. "Bring him to his room to rest." Until he would be ready to be the weapon he'd been designed to be…

* * *

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. No, horribly wrong.

Knuckles sat in front of the Master Emerald, his brow wrinkled by a deep frown. He had been sitting here for one day and two nights already, listening and focussing, not allowing himself more movement than breathing.

It had been around midnight and Knuckles had been peacefully asleep on the grass at the Emerald altar's bottom, when the guardian had been wakened up. By the utter feeling of _wrongness_. Wrongness concerning the most important thing in his life, and Knuckles couldn't possibly sleep if something was wrong with the Master Emerald.

There was no one on the Island. Knuckles was sure about that. He was alone. Alone with the giant green Emerald. Normally, that would have been a fact that was suited to calm him a lot. Right now, it wasn't. Not in the slightest.

Sure, there was no thief around, but still, there was danger to the Emerald. Knuckles KNEW. And it was a sort of danger he'd never experienced before, although he'd been guardian for his entire life.

Something was changing. Slowly. Creepingly. But without any way for him to stop it. The energy was changing. The very Chaos Energy itself. Knuckles had no clue why and how, but it was freaking him out.

He was the guardian. It was his job to save the Master Emerald from any kind of danger, and so he would stay here until he found a way to fight that new danger. The threat within…

Knuckles closed his eyes, letting his breath out with a sigh as he lowered his mind into deep mediation, straining his senses for the familiar energy.

And for what wasn't familiar at all.


	2. Questions

**Questions**

Tails whistled the melody of the song playing in the radio and spun his twin tails to lift himself up. He hovered in front of his cupboard, his hands digging in a box that contained almost every kind of thing that remotely fitted the term 'tool'. The cupboard was huge, and considering that Tails wasn't more than 80 centimeters tall, he would have needed a ladder to reach the things in it, but his unique ability to fly like a little furred helicopter meant his short height was no trouble.

Finally discovering the thing he'd been searching for, the orange fox dropped down to the floor and returned to where he had been working on his plane, trying to tickle some extra juice out of the engines. He was installing a Chaos Emerald as a second power source after he had found one yesterday.

But for some reason, it didn't work at all. The Emerald didn't give any power to the engine, although Tails was sure his installation was correct; it wasn't the first one of its kind after all. From an examination of the Emerald, it did look normal. As normal as a red, brilliant-shaped piece of crystallized Chaos Energy could possibly look…

Tails sighed as he once again plugged the wires that led from the small red stone to the biplane's interior. He was about to switch on the power and start his tenth attempt or so, when the sounds of slight metallic scraping caught his attention.

He turned around over his shoulder to see the door slide open and from the current rain shower outside, an entirely drenched and seemingly slightly beat blue hedgehog stepped in. Tails grinned. "Hiya Sonic! You brought a terrible weather along, you know?"

Sonic shook himself like a dog, drops of water flying from wet quills. "Uhh…. You can really say that!" He gave a small grin. "Was an ugly day."

Tails was about to nod when Sonic made a step forwards. "Stop right there!"

Sonic froze. "What's up?"

"You are bringing half of a lake inside, that's what's up. I'll get you a towel before my whole house turns into a swimming pool." Tails grinned and whirled to run upstairs.

Sonic smiled, standing perfectly still until the fox came back. The hedgehog towelled himself dry, glad to finally get rid of all this cold dampness. He looked up at Tails again when he heard the fox giggling. "Hey, what's so funny?"

"You should see yourself!" Tails' two namesakes twirled in amusement.

Sonic looked himself down and quickly stroked a hand over his frizzy fur. He wanted to complain about Tails making fun of poor wet hedgehogs, but the word was eaten away by a sudden yawn.

Tails was still beaming. "Long day?"

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, I had a nice meeting with Eggman and a few dozen robots. Wanted me to give him a Chaos Emerald. Firstly, I didn't have any, and secondly, does that weirdo really think I'd give _him_ an Emerald?"

Tails shrugged. "He's Eggman." The tone of his words made it a clear explanation instead of a comment. Changing the topic, Tails pointed over at the plane. "If you can wait a few minutes, we can have some dinner together; I just want to finish with this."

"Okay," Sonic agreed without asking what Tails was working on; he just strolled over to the worn-out sofa standing on the other side of the workshop and flopped into it with a tired groan.

Tails grinned and walked back to his current piece of work, taking out some of the wires, checking them over and plugging everything back together without having found anything that could have caused the problems. When he shot a glance back to Sonic, the hedgehog was snoring quietly. Tails shrugged and switched on the power.

The next thing he knew was that there was a bang, a sudden bright red light, and his table erupted into flames. Startled, Tails tumbled back with a yelp. He was caught and saved from falling backwards over a box on the floor behind him by a pair of hands on his shoulders and the fox looked up to stare into Sonic's sleepily confused, but alarmed green eyes.

"What the hell is going on, Tails?!"

"Don't know!" Tails pulled himself loose and rushed over to pull the circuit breakers on the wall. The lights in the hangar went out... If you ignored the fire still shining bright on the workbench.

"Tails?" Sonic was staring at the flames, struggling to get his sleepy senses to grasp what was going on. Failing, the hedgehog turned to Tails. "What the hell happened?!"

The fox grabbed a fire extinguisher and hurried back to the burning table, trying to get the extinguisher to work while he answered. "I was just testing out a new device to make use of a Chaos Emerald as power source in the Tornado."

The fire finally died out as white foam showered the table.

"Testing out? What exactly? You sure that it wasn't a flame thrower instead of a power source? You burned half of the room!" Sonic exaggerated, pointing at the table, starting to get fully awake now as a slightly belated shock pushed a not small amount of adrenaline into his bloodstream. He searched around for a flashlight, finally found one and let the light cast over the remains of the just dead fire. The hedgehog frowned. "Which Emerald was it that set your stuff on fire you said?"

Tails' gaze followed the shine of Sonic's small torch when he returned to the table. Everything that remained on it was a scorched black heap of charred metal and plastic that probably had been his newest invention a few minutes ago. The red Chaos Emerald was gone.

"The Emerald that vanished in a flame blowing up my equipment," Tails said quietly.

Sonic rubbed his nose, slowly regaining his casual pose. "Weird."

* * *

Coming to think of it, the soft and warm surroundings were really comfortable. It took him a long while to get from a state of simply enjoying the conditions around to wondering about them. What was this place? Why was he here? How did he get here? _…_ He grunted as seemingly unanswerable questions flashed through his mind, then finally got the idea to make use of his senses and opened his eyes, sitting up in an almost hasty manner.

There was only a very dim light around him and it didn't show him much. The room was small, containing the bed he found himself sitting on, a table and a door.

Bringing his feet down to the floor, he found somehow that touching the ground felt utterly… he couldn't place it, but it was... _odd_. As if something was wrong about the way it happened. He looked down on his feet and wriggled his toes, but found himself unable to define what exactly bothered him.

He shrugged it off and padded over to the door, quickly discovering that it confronted him with yet another problem. It was closed and he didn't have the slightest idea how to change that. But apparently there was no need to find out, because just in that moment, the metallic door slid aside almost soundlessly.

Directly in front of him stood a person almost two times taller than he was. The strange creature grinned down on him from behind a huge mustache. "I see you're awake."

" _Who_ are you?"

* * *

Rouge turned to the door when her sharp ears noticed the metallic footsteps on the floor outside. "It's open! Just wait a sec, I'm in the bathroom!"

From downstairs came the sounds of Omega's entry. Rouge finished dressing and went downstairs to her living room. The red robot was standing in the middle of it, seeming completely out of place in Rouge's apartment, between the long cabinet that displayed the bat's collection of all sorts of gemstones, her big, comfortable sofa and the small, low table that stood in front of it and now looked even smaller directly compared to the massive form of the combat robot. Usually Rouge gave a lot for things fitting to her decoration, but in Omega's case she'd always made an exception, especially now that the right of his grasp claws held a fist-sized, brilliant form.

"Oh, you found a beautiful jewel!" With a delighted smile the white bat looked at the twinking light blue stone, but rather quickly - by her standards when it came to jewels - pulled her eyes away from it again, her attention returning to the main reason of Omega's visit. "Anything heard about Shadow?"

"No available sources of information could provide any hint on subject Shadow's current location." Omega shook his robotic head, a gesture he had adapted a while ago; Rouge wasn't quite sure why he had. "Complete search of all of my own databanks did not detect any comment Shadow has given on planned operations at the current time."

Rouge sighed. "Simply disappearing for weeks without saying a word is hard even for Shadow."

"You are experiencing the emotional condition called 'worry'." Omega's neutral tone made it sound like a statement, not a question. Maybe it was also meant as one.

The white bat nodded.

"Do you want to plan a mission to relocate him?", Omega continued.

"Okay, we'll do that," Rouge agreed. "I'll just get myself a coffee." She turned and went over to her kitchen.

She poured some milk into her coffee and was already on her way back, when she was blinded by a bright light from the doorway. "Omega? You okay?!" The bat almost splashed the coffee out of the mug when she rushed to the living room.

"All systems functional," Omega replied before Rouge could reach him. "There was an interesting phenomenon here. So far this unit is not able to find an explanation."

Rouge finally made it through the door. She stopped short in confusion. The room was empty. Well, it LOOKED empty. She couldn't see a person in here, but her sharp ears told her that Omega was still there, standing right where she'd left him and - he'd been talking to her.

"Omega? What happened?"

"It appears the Chaos Emerald disappeared."

"No, what happened to YOU?" Rouge stepped closer, her big ears turning and twitching, catching the sounds that told her the robot stood right in front of her. Had to stand there. The bat stretched her hand out and touched the armor of Omega's robot body, knocking her fingertips on solid metal. TONK. TONK. He was very certainly there.

"Rouge? Is there a problem?"

"Look at yourself!" Rouge took a few steps back again.

There was a moment of silence before the robot spoke. "Optical sensors seem to have been damaged," he stated.

"No, they are working just great." Rouge looked up at where she knew the robot's head. "You are invisible."

* * *

You could say many things about Ivo Robotnik, but not that he was impatient. He could wait, wait very well for the important things to happen, for the things that would hopefully bring him finally closer than ever to his one aim in life. Power. The power to be the controller of a world designed in the way he wanted it, he dreamed it.

But now that his monitors told him that a two days wait had finally come to an end, Robotnik's face was crossed by an almost delighted smile. He had planned and plotted the capture very thoroughly, trapped him in an energetic force field he couldn't escape from and used a specially designed ray to drain him of his powers. The process had been much more forceful than he'd calculated; it had destroyed nearly both the captured creature and the machine. Robotnik had needed long to find a Chaos Emerald to repair the structural damage he'd done; rings had proven to be too weak.

But it seemed as if his plan was going to be a complete success, a brilliant success. One worthy of the most intelligent scientist in the world. Now he needed to be careful playing this game, not risking too much at once; there was too much to lose.

Robotnik stood up and walked out into the corridor, picking up the pair of shoes, and opened the door to the small resting room. He wasn't the least bit surprised to find the small, black and red spiked creature standing directly in front of him. "I see you're awake," Robotnik said.

Instead of answering to this comment, the black hedgehog stared up at him; his red eyes confused, questioning. "Who are you?"

A small grin crept onto Robotnik's lips. He didn't know. That was what he'd been planning. Although being an all-in-all very successful biological experiment, his memory had always failed easily, being erased after too much stress. Such as _he_ had created. What of course was why he had created it, as a matter of fact. "My name is Ivo Robotnik and I'm your only friend."

The hedgehog frowned, but still seeming more confused than suspicious. Then the crimson eyes lit on the things Robotnik carried and he pointed. "What's that?"

"They're yours. They're hoverskates." The scientist held the shoes out at him, bending down a little. He needed to gain his trust before anything else.

The black hedgehog reached out and grabbed his shoes, for a moment turning them around in his hands, examining them with curious interest, then pulled them over his feet. A small smirk crossed his face when he skated a few feet forwards. Then he looked back up at Robotnik, his face now an entire collection of question marks. "Why do you have these? Why didn't I? … Do we … Do we know each other?"

"Of course we know each other." That, for once, wasn't a lie at all. "Shadow."

"Huh?" A handful of more question marks was added to his puzzled face and one of his ears twitched backwards.

"That's your name. Shadow." Robotnik forced himself to smile as the black hedgehog looked himself down.

'Why don't I know?', his eyes seemed to ask, but he only managed to repeat the name. "Shadow…"

Robotnik put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him along the corridor. "I will explain it to you." Well. Explain to him what he wanted to explain to him anyway… "But not everything now, we got a lot of important things to do and you need to do training."

Shadow frowned. "What for?"

* * *

Sonic stretched on the couch and turned off the TV. He stood up and walked down to the workshop where Tails was still trying to make some sense of the vanishing Chaos Emerald last evening. "And?", Sonic asked as he neared his brother, "Anything came out yet? Did you find it back or something?"

Tails looked up and shook his head. "No. Nothing. Not the tiniest trace that the Emerald was here in the first place. It's as if it never existed."

"Hm." Sonic folded his arms. "On the news there was a report that a Chaos Emerald disappeared from a university, but they are quite sure that it was a robbery. And one just vanished from a lab in a hospital." He shrugged. "But no one seems to find that interesting. Everyone is on about some kind of medical miracle."

Tails raised an eyebrow. "Medical miracle?"

Sonic nodded and gestured vaguely. "Some kind of miracle healing that suddenly happened to a few deadly ill people in that hospital."

Tails' second eyebrow went up to join the first. "Ah yes. Do you think the Emerald they were holding there did that?"

"No idea. They _can_ heal, but they never did that randomly before, did they?" Sonic tilted his head.

"No, not before. They didn't set themselves on fire before either," Tails stated.

"Point," Sonic nodded. "So, what do we do? It doesn't look as if our Emerald would come back here, does it?"

"No. We could go and search for others. They might endanger people around them. Just think what would happen if one exploded and set free all the energy it contains!" Tails' namesakes twirled hastily, almost knotting themselves up.

"Can we track down the other Emeralds? Or do we know where they are?"

"No, I'm afraid we have no idea where else we can find any Chaos Emeralds. I once had a tracking device. But it fell out of the cupboard and broke. I could try build a new one, but without an Emerald, that'd be difficult. It'd be easier if we knew who has got Chaos Emeralds and therefore might be endangered. But we don't know anybody." Tails shrugged.

Sonic slowly turned fully to him, pointy ears twitching. "That isn't entirely correct. We know one person who's got one thing of an Emerald."

Tails stared back at Sonic. "Knuckles!"

Sonic nodded. "I see we think the same."

The little fox clapped his hand on his mouth. "Oh dear... What'd happen if the Master Emerald went nuts? It could blow up the floating island or something!"

"We don't want to find out, do we?" Sonic pointed across the hangar. "Did the Tornado get badly damaged yesterday?"

"No, not at all. A few cables charred, but I already replaced them." Tails lifted himself up with spinning tails. "Come on!"

* * *


	3. Out of Control

**Out Of Control**

Sonic stood on the Tornado's double wings, shielding his eyes with his right hand as he stared forwards. Spotting a vague shadow against the clouds and the blue sky, he turned around to Tails. "I think I see it."

"Was about time. We needed ages to find it. We really should install some kind of tracking device there." Tails leaned out of the cockpit to get a good view on their nearing goal. "Searching the stupid island takes centuries."

Sonic grinned. "Well, try and put a tracking device anywhere on his island and I promise you Knux will beat you to pulp. Or knot your tails and hang you upside-down from one of his ruins-in-the-jungle deathtraps and then come back every day to remind you of your crime."

Tails grimaced. "Thank you very much. I think I can do without that."

Sonic snickered. "I'm sure Knuckles will find several good reasons why tracking devices endanger his Master Emerald. Even _I_ can think of some."

"Yeah, I know, if we can track his Floating Island down, possible thieves can too." Tails sighed. "I didn't really mean it. It was more that I felt like grouching after these hours of uselessly searching around. And if we had a working chaos energy detector, we could easily track the Master Emerald anyway..."

So it bothered Tails that he'd broken the device more than that they'd spent so much time searching, Sonic thought. Figures. He tilted his head at his little friend. "But we finally made it, didn't we?"

"Sure. And it is still flying. That's a good sign I guess." Tails lowered the plane's flight now that they were close enough to Angel Island to make out trees, ruins and rocks clearly.

"I suggest we land over there," the blue hedgehog pointed.

Tails just nodded and brought the red biplane down on a clearing. "Just go ahead and take a look around, Sonic. I'll just turn the Tornado so we won't have to do that later. If we need to leave because..." Tails left the sentence unfinished, but it was clear to the hedgehog what he meant.

Sonic nodded. "Maybe we're just paranoid and it's nothing wrong up here."

Tails shrugged. "That'd be the best of course."

"Anyway, later Tails." Sonic jumped down to the grass and started running into the forest, heading for where he knew the Temple of Chaos was. Sonic had been here several times already, so he mostly knew his way around on Angel Island.

He reached the place not more than one minute later, slowing to a walk when he left the forest behind and stepped out on another open field of grass.

Sonic's green eyes trailed over the stony pillars that appeared in front of him, slightly covered by moss and ivy, some of them broken and lying on the grass, others lacking their tops, one of them split into two at half of its original height, the upper part toppled and now leaning against the lower like a small gate. All of the seven pillars formed a still clearly visible circle around the altar in their midst. Showing signs of its age as much as the rest of the temple, the high stairway, too high to see its summit, was an imposing sight nonetheless; its clearly ancient heritage lending the place a mystical atmosphere.

Sonic slowly walked up to the stairs and started climbing them, watching how the sky above the top seemed to be washed green with the glow of the temple's precious center. Sonic had barely reached the top of the stairway and caught a brief sight of the Master Emerald, when he was thrown off his feet, a steel grip closing on his shoulders and throat.

"Uhrgh!" Sonic struggled, pinned to the rocky ground and fighting to get enough air to speak. "Hey, let go, Knucklehead! Cough! It's just me!"

Knuckles finally spent a real look on whoever he had just tackled. It didn't need much more than a glimpse, Sonic's blue coloring and his spiky shape were easily recognizable. Embarrassed, the echidna released the hedgehog and stood up quickly. "Sonic? What are you doing here?"

"I didn't come to get myself strangled, very much thanks for asking." Sonic grimaced and sat up, massaging his sore throat.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't know it was you." Knuckles shrugged.

"So, _what_ did you think I was? A freaky monster trying to eat your Emerald?"

Knuckles opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again, not knowing how he could explain to Sonic that right now he was expecting ANYTHING, and that included Emerald-eating monsters. "I ... don't know what I was expecting," was the most detailed explanation the guardian could manage.

"Great. You don't know." Sonic pulled a face.

Not knowing what more he could say, by way of apology Knuckles settled for offering Sonic his hand instead and pull him back to his feet.

Sonic dusted himself off, then really looked at Knuckles for the first time. The echidna's red dreadlock-spines were matted and tousled and his eyes carried the dull expression of deep tiredness. A frown appeared on the hedgehog's face. "Everything okay here? You look horrible. When was the last time you actually slept?"

"Err..." Knuckles shrugged again, not knowing himself.

"Two days? Three?"

"How's that your business, hedgehog?" Feeling uneasy with Sonic's quizzing, Knuckles tried to change the topic. "Why did you come?"

"Down on the surface the Chaos Emeralds are going nuts," Sonic accepted the change of direction, skipping on Knuckles' apparently not great mood without further comment. "One set Tails' workshop on fire, others disappeared. We were worried your Emerald could go crazy too. So we came to check on you."

"We?" Knuckles raised his eyebrows, the only reaction he could think of right now. He didn't really know how he was thinking of Sonic's explanation, but he had more pressing concerns at the moment.

"Tails should be here in a minute. He's just parking the plane." Sonic pointed down the stairs, then he turned back to the echidna. "So, what's wrong here?"

* * *

Robotnik jerked out of his seat when the alarms of the base seemed to cry out all at the same time. Leaning forwards, the scientist's hands rushed over the keys of his dashboards, multiple screens in front of him flashing into action. Detecting the place in his underground hideout the alarms were caused at, Robotnik hurried out of the room, of course not before having called a small army of his personal robots to accompany him.

Hurrying along the corridors, he almost ran into Shadow. The black hedgehog looked puzzled at the ear-piercing blaring of noises all around. "What's going on, Doctor?!"

"Quit your training! Something happened!" The round scientist was gasping, not being used to any real physical workout.

Shadow had been working out anyway and he had been designed to run, so he quickly was ahead of the doctor.

The black and red hedgehog stopped when he reached a door, or more accurately what was left of it. Carefully Shadow stepped through the wreckage and into another room. It was not as well-lit as the rest of the base, only the dim sparkling of charring pieces of electricity provided the room with a small amount of lighting.

The interior of the room was spread across the floor, pieces of machinery being yanked out of their sockets at the wall or on the floor. Small blue sparks licked on the ends of torn wires, the cables swinging loosely from the ceiling and walls, some of the damaged devices' screens broken and burning. Purple glowing mists floated softly through the room and parts of the walls seemed to have started glooming in strange light.

Shadow looked around with his red eyes wide open, then turned around to Robotnik when the scientist finally approached. "What happened here?!" the hedgehog asked, pointing at the destruction in front of him. "What was in this room?"

"My Chaos Emerald." Robotnik shook his head at the sorry look of his precious machinery.

"What's a Chaos Emerald?", Shadow asked.

"It's a kind of gemstone and contains an incredible amount of energy and power," Robotnik answered flatly; he had gotten used to the hedgehog asking about every simple thing he mentioned. Knowing that he would have more advantages than disadvantage of Shadow's forced-on amnesia (by him anyway), the scientist could handle the slightly annoying curiosity of his 'guest'. "I was doing … _research_ on it," he continued.

"What can it be used for?" Shadow tilted his head.

"Oh, a lot of useful things. It will be very good for us if we find all seven there are. And you will help me find them."

"Why?"

"Because you are very well suited for that job. And if you bring them to me, I might find a way to restore your memory."

Shadow's eyes went wide with astonishment, not noticing the way Robotnik smiled, not a friendly smile, but a smile satisfied about being so easily able to fool him. "Really? Then let me search for them!"

"Not yet. Something that is not supposed to happen was going on here. The Chaos Emerald is gone and it caused massive destruction in here. So I need to find out what caused this event. This discovery can be very important for my research."

Shadow frowned, but the shrugged it off. "So, what can I do?"

"You," the human pointed to the damaged door, "just get on with your training until I'm ready here."

* * *

"You mean, the Chaos Energy is changing?" Lost in thought, Tails was running his fingers through the orange fur of one of his bushy namesakes.

Knuckles slowly shook his head, looking down on the steps of the stairway he was sitting on aside of the fox cub. "No, I mean, yes... Well, it's... that's what I first thought. It changes, yes, but it's being forced to change against its will."

" _Will_?" Sonic raised his eyebrows, standing with folded arms in front of the others, a few treads lower. "You are telling me the Master Emerald's got a mind of its own?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes I think so, but I never found a real answer in all these years."

"So, if it doesn't change on purpose," Tails returned the topic to the really important things right now. "What changes it?"

"I don't know." Knuckles wondered for a second how often he'd been using these particular words in this particular order already today. "It's as if something's manipulating it." The echidna half turned over his shoulder, shooting a glance up at the Master Emerald. "I can feel it in the back of my mind like an echo of what it does to the Emerald. It hurts."

Tails and Sonic exchanged a helpless glance. "It hurts? You?", Sonic asked.

Knuckles turned back to him and Tails. "Well, it's not real pain; it's more like the impression of a distant headache."

"And this started three days ago now." Tails tilted his head.

Knuckles nodded. "A little more than three, yes."

Sonic tapped his left foot on the stairs a few times, thinking. "That means it started well before _our_ Chaos Emerald went berserk."

Knuckles nodded. "After what you've been telling me, it seems as if the Chaos Emeralds are lacking their stability. That is said to happen when the Master's control loosens."

"It is said?" Sonic frowned.

"There are many legends about the Chaos Emeralds. It is said that this happened once already. That the powers of chaos broke free and the world was tumbling into disaster." A shudder suddenly ran through the echidna for a second as he continued. "Fires burned down the forests, cities were destroyed, storms raged, and rivers and seas burst their banks for weeks."

"And? What happened?", Tails demanded breathlessly.

"After a few weeks everything just returned to normal. No idea what happened to change everything back or if it worked on its own. This is told to have happened thousands of years ago." Knuckles shrugged. "It's a legend."

"The fire in Tails' hangar didn't seem much like a legend to me, " Sonic pointed out, "What'll happen to the Emeralds? Do they teleport to some other place and randomly do the same again?"

"Hell hedgehog, how the heck should I know?!" Knuckles half jumped upright, but let himself drop back to the stairs with a sigh.

"Okay, okay, I was just asking." Sonic calmingly waved his hands at the echidna. This was clearly not the moment to start arguing, so he better tried not to provoke him.

Tails studied the red echidna. "If Knuckles can feel it and it somewhat interferes with the Master Emerald's energy, it must be something energetic itself. What means maybe I can adjust the devices we sometimes used to track down Chaos Emeralds to find the source of this … whatever it might be."

"Really? How long do you need forthat ? You said your thing is broken. You'll need to build a new one and if Knuckles' legend is connected with what's happening right now, this will get far worse soon." Sonic ran a hand through his quills.

"I don't know, I –" Tails started, but interrupted his speech when Knuckles at his side shot upwards and spun around to the Master Emerald.

Sonic leaped up to his side. "What's wrong, Knux?!"

"It's going to break," the echidna mumbled in a mere whisper, staring at the green gemstone.

"It's going to - _break_?!", both Sonic and Tails shouted in unison.

"Then we'll fall, right?", Tails added.

Knuckles answered with a barely visible nod, not taking his eyes off the Master Emerald with an expression of horror on his face.

"Then I suggest you land this island of yours as fast as possible!" Sonic quickly turned to Tails. "Are we still above the ocean?"

Tails shrugged. "We were when we came here. I'll check with the Tornado's computers and see if I can find a shallow spot for us to land." The small fox spun his twin tails and flew down the stairway and into the forest as fast as he could.

Sonic paced aside of Knuckles and the giant stone. "You _can_ still land it, can't you?"

The red echidna slowly gave a half nod. "I hope so," he mumbled.

 _Oh great_ , Sonic thought, but bit his tongue, deciding that this was clearly not the time to say anything like that.

It needed a felt eternity until the fox came back. He shouted at them the second he was within earshot. "About fifty miles - north-northeast of us - there are a few reefs and underwater - mountains," he gasped, out of breath from hurrying, "should be a safe - landing place. With an altitude of eight - kilometres we should make it - to there." Tails landed aside of Sonic and leaned on his knees panting.

Knuckles stepped closer to the Master Emerald and its green glow intensified as the guardian slowly brought the floating island in a descending motion towards the planet. Knuckles closed his eyes while he summoned the fragile power, hoping it would carry long enough to safely get down. Finally there was a small thud through the ground when the socket of the island sank into the shallow sea and rested onto the rocks just below the water surface.

Then it happened. They had really made it down, but that was as far as the fragile powers would carry. With a flash of green brightness and a feeling in Knuckles' head as if a part of himself was being torn apart, the giant Emerald splinted like glass under a hammer. The echidna opened his eyes, knowing already what he'd see, something he'd seen more often than he liked and something he'd wished with his entire being not having to see again.

Sonic and Tails stared at the shards of the broken Emerald, they had both known that it could break and both seen its pieces before, but this was the first time they actually saw it. Sonic slowly walked closer to the heap of green shards. "What now?"

"We need to bring the pieces to a safe place," Knuckles replied tonelessly. "I cannot restore it as long as this manipulating whatsoever still exists."

"We will find it and stop it," Tails declared, trying to cheer Knuckles up.

The echidna just nodded, his face expressionless, eyes fixed on the shards that had just stopped glowing.

"Hidden palace?", Sonic suggested, pointing at the remains of the Master Emerald.

"Hmm," Knuckles nodded again and the three started picking up the pieces and each of them carried an armful of Master Emerald to the secret chamber. Knuckles hesitantly looked down on what was left of the thing he was supposed to guard.

"Come on, you can't do anything here. We fly back to my workshop and then we can find what made it break," Tails said.

Knuckles slowly inclined his head. Now he was weary, feeling tired, numb and empty, and he simply allowed Sonic to put a hand on his shoulder and shove him out of the cave.


	4. Discovery

**Discovery**

Knuckles sat with his back against the outer wall of Tails' workshop. Tails was inside; he had been tinkering with his stuff ever since they came here around midnight. Sonic was sleeping on a couch – and Knuckles was glad he was. While Tails had been busy, Sonic didn't have anything to do. The hedgehog had tried convincing Knuckles to eat something, to talk to him… to… a lot of things Knuckles had not really felt up for, but he finally had agreed to do most, just to silence Sonic.

After the hedgehog eventually lay snoring on the couch, Knuckles had paced around the hangar and looked over Tails' shoulder. Until the fox had basically thrown him out of the room remarking he could work much better without having people standing behind him all the time and that Knuckles should get some sleep, he was looking like walking death.

The echidna hadn't bothered with a look into the mirror to check up on Tails' description. It didn't matter. _Nothing_ really mattered until he found a way to stop whatever was happening to the Emeralds.

Knuckles sighed and ran a hand over his face. He felt like crap. Maybe Tails _was_ right and he also looked it. His head hurt, the rest of his body was filled with a weird, heavy emptiness, his eyes burned as if he had some kind of irritant in them and his vision kept blurring.

The echidna blinked slowly. Dawn was a haze of gold and blue. It was starting to be so bright it hurt. Knuckles closed his eyes against the light, trying in vain to keep his thoughts from growing even more sluggish as they already were at this point.

… It was dark, but a small orange glimpse of light was glooming somewhere, not truly locatable, growing from the distance until he could guess the shapes of its outline, spinning around him, circling him, making a kind of noise he had never heard before. Another glow suddenly added to it, familiar, warm in spite of its color. Green melted into orange, getting closer to him and to the opposite color, the noise increasing to a bang and green pieces shattered and vanished into the endless darkness around. A pitch black cold billowed out of it, and only the orange remained glooming without any tint of warmth. A threat. Somehow… _looking_ at him. Coming closer.

Knuckles twitched, mumbling and then wincing at the sound of his own voice. Hazy pictures of lights and darkness and colours faded quickly from his mind without becoming a clear memory. He struggled to manage a straight thought and realized confusedly that his eyes were shut and he was lying on the grass. The freezing cold was gone, instead, he felt warm all over. Still, his heart was beating a tad too fast and the sense of almost fear, at least of nervousness didn't fit his sleepiness at all, but the echidna failed to remember what had caused it.

He propped himself up on his elbows and found a pillow lying on the grass. A yawn came over him while he started wondering how the heck this pillow had found its way out. He had not brought it. Knuckles shrugged to himself as he sat up and stretched, yawning again. It couldn't be really important, considering that he did indeed feel much better now.

Almost like a living being again.

Before he could go on to think any further, a nagging pain growled in his belly, sharply reminding him just how hungry he was. Knuckles crawled to his feet, fetching the pillow, and returned inside.

The hangar was empty, filled with a just quiet hum of energy. Knuckles got upstairs and found Sonic sitting on the couch table in the living room, busily throwing the lids of coke bottles at a small box standing at the wall the other side of the room. The admirable precision he performed these ballistic experiments with suggested he wasn't doing it only for a minute.

"Uhhm," Knuckles started.

Sonic's last lid missed by an inch. "You ruined my record," he said, then hopped off the low table, turned to Knuckles and grinned. "Well, you're feeling better now?"

"Hmm," the echidna nodded. "Oh, before I forget: Good morning."

Sonic's grin broadened. "Is that what you call morning, ey? The clock over there says it's five in the afternoon." The hedgehog pointed to the wall behind Knuckles.

"Oh."

"You know, sensible people sleep during the night. But it looks as if I'm not surrounded by sensible people right now."

Knuckles smirked. "Then you fit in at least."

Sonic didn't flinch at the comment. "Tails is catching up on some sleep as well. The generator downstairs is building up power to work his Emerald detector without a Chaos Emerald. He said it's almost ready to give it a try."

Knuckles nodded. "Fine." His gaze fell on the pillow he still held. "Err... What do I do with this?"

Sonic shrugged, still smirking. "Throw it on the sofa. I took it from there this morning. Found you comatose on the grass when I went out for my morning run and thought you'd get a hell of a stiff neck sleeping like that."

"Uh, thanks, I guess." Knuckles tossed the pillow over onto the couch.

"You're welcome." Sonic grinned when Knuckles' stomach gave another growl. "Hehe, your stomach has more of a common sense than you. I guess we'll get some early dinner, huh? I'm sure Tails will like some food, too."

Knuckles nodded.

* * *

"Damnit!" Robotnik's angry curse forced Shadow to look up at where the scientist was standing on a small ladder in front of a big shelf, a metallic box in his hands. Seeing the tall human standing in that position made him seem even more abnormal than he already did otherwise. "I hate it if things don't go the way I planned them!"

Shadow pulled his full attention away from the numeric letterings aside of the doorway to the room they were in and skated closer to Robotnik who was less than elegantly climbing down the ladder. "What's wrong, Doctor?", the black and red hedgehog asked.

"It is broken!" The human held the box out at Shadow.

Looking in, Shadow glimpsed an amount of shards of thick glass. "Can you repair it?"

"No! No, it can't be repaired. We need to replace it." Robotnik put the box down onto a desk, heavily leaning with both of his hands onto the table. "And I don't have anything here we can use. We need to find something elsewhere." He sighed, but suddenly slammed his fist down onto the desk, the shards in the box tinkling. "I was so _close_!"

"Hm. If you tell me where I can find such a thing, I could go and get you something to replace this," Shadow offered. The human was helping him and giving him a roof above his head here, so he could as well help him out in return.

Robotnik looked back up at him, a smile forming on his lips. "Well, I need to investigate a little on where we can find another lens that is as good. And then you are going to bring it to me, my friend."

* * *

"Alright guys. Wish us luck." Tails' finger rested on top of the button to turn on the modified Emerald detector.

"Hope it works," Knuckles muttered. He was leaning against the big table that stood in the middle of the workshop, his eyes almost suspiciously fixed on the device it held.

"Don't worry, Tails rarely builds stuff that doesn't," Sonic remarked, casually standing at Tails' other side, arms folded on his chest.

A brief smile flickered over Tails' face. "Well, I based this device on the machine we used to track down Chaos Emeralds before. But since we are searching for something different, I can't guarantee that it'll work. You said it is something resembling the chaos energy, so the chances that it will be able to detect something are approximately-"

"Tails?", Sonic interrupted the fox' speech. "Switch it on and let's see what happens."

"Oh, err, of course..." Tails giggled, blushing slightly under the white fur on his muzzle, but he pressed the button.

The quiet hum that had filled the hangar before grew louder, the lights flickered when the small machine demanded all the energy the generator could master for its own, but the screen of the detector on the table blinked into life, the picture it showed almost black, just some colorful stripes erratically spread across the screen interrupting the dark default coloring.

"Okay, we need to enter a search pattern, something that defines what we are searching for," Tails explained without the others having needed to ask.

"Great," Knuckles groaned, "since we are searching for something we have never seen before, we won't be able to describe it so that this thing here can track it, right?"

"Tails?", Sonic asked. " _Is_ Knux right?"

The fox looked at the red echidna with a thoughtful expression on his face, but he didn't really seem as if he'd been listening to the others. "It mainly interfered with the Master Emerald," he mumbled, "so it is likely that the similarity between the Master Emerald and this thing is bigger than with the Chaos Emeralds..." The two tailed fox chewed his lip, then suddenly whirled to the machine, his fingers rushing over the keypad. "I'll set it to the energetic pattern of the polar opposite of the Master Emerald."

Sonic and Knuckles exchanged a glance. "He's doing what?", the hedgehog whispered, but the echidna only shrugged back. Sonic turned back to Tails and his newest invention. "And? Working?"

Tails nodded excitedly. "Look here, I'm getting some sort of reading. Do you see that red line and this dot there?"

Knuckles leaned closer. "Yeah. That's this thing? Where is it then, Tails?"

Before the fox could reply, Sonic stretched out his arm and his index finger pointed at the screen. "What I find almost more interesting: Why is it moving, Tails?"

"It moves?", the fox and the echidna shouted in unison.

Sonic nodded. "Just barely. Look at it for a moment. It moves to the left a bit."

Tails narrowed his blue eyes. "You're right."

"This is all very interesting and stuff, but could we first find out where it is so we can go smash it or something?", Knuckles urged.

Tails nodded. "Just a second, Knuckles." His fingers were hastily typing data into the detector again. "Sonic? Get the computer on."

"Alright." The blue hedgehog zipped to the other side of the room to the desk.

"Knuckles? Paper and pencil, please," Tails ordered, not taking his eyes off the screen. He reached blindly when Knuckles held a small sheet of paper out at him and scribbled down a few numbers just as blindly.

Sonic returned and looked over his shoulder. "Eh, what does that tell us? What's these numbers?"

"Three-dimensional coordinates on vectorial basis to determine a fixed position in space," Tails replied distractedly, taking his note sheet and flying over to his desk where he dropped onto the chair.

"It is – what?", Knuckles asked while he and Sonic followed the fox.

Sonic shrugged. "Something like a landmark, I guess."

"Yes. More or less," Tails agreed and turned around to his friends while his computer loaded a program. "It's a bit like a map, but with three dimensions. That way we can find out quite exactly where that thing is."

"Nice." Sonic tipped his head aside in curiosity, leaning past Tails to get a good look at the computer screen.

The fox typed in the data the detector had given out and waited. For a moment the screen showed an increasing loading progress, then the result of the calculation appeared on the screen. Tails let out a gasp and leaned heavily against the backrest of his chair. "This is... impossible..."

"Tails? What's up?" Sonic's gaze flew between the computer and his fox friend.

"Bad news?" Knuckles' tone betrayed his concern. "Where is it?"

Tails took a deep breath. "It's not on Mobius," he said quietly.

Sonic frowned. "Then, where is it? Angel Island?"

Knuckles winced at the mentioning of his home, already expecting things to be even worse than he'd thought, but Tails shook his head.

"No, I mean it's really not on the planet," the fox said slowly. "It's a few hundred thousand kilometres in space."


	5. Encounters

**Encounters**

It smelled of salty water below. A fresh sea wind was blowing into Sonic's face as the blue hedgehog sat with his legs dangling on the Tornado's left wing, scanning the area below the plane. He could see small roads and a town from time to time as the Tornado followed the coastline. "How far is it, Tails?"

"Not long I guess," the fox replied. "It's the next town we'll fly over. It's got a small airport where we can land."

"And then we need to get to this observatory somehow," Knuckles put in, leaning out of the plane to get a look down himself.

"The professor will send us a taxi so we can get to him right away. And then we can look at this Emerald manipulating thing out there much better. I'm curious what it is." Tails' two namesakes twirled excitedly.

"We are lucky you know him, Tails, and that he allowed us to use his lab," Sonic said, his gaze following a small boat that crossed the sea below, bouncing up and down rythmically with the waves.

After their confusing discovery, Tails had called a scientist he knew who was working at an astronomical observatory and the professor had agreed to help them. With the advanced technical devices and especially the telescopes their chances to work out details about the mysterious object were growing enormously.

At least that was what Tails had said.

"I guess I see the town. There's a building with a round top," Sonic pointed.

"Hmm, almost there," Tails nodded.

"It's pretty," the hedgehog noticed. "A nice place to spend the holidays."

The small town nestled up against the hills on three sides, tiny houses almost hidden in the valleys or in groups of four or five sitting on top of the round hills. To the fourth side, the town met the sea, a line of little buildings following a wild beach with high waves, the water turning white around the rocks interrupting the sand. At one end of the beach, the inhabitants of the town had calmed the sea and restrained its wild mood with thick, massive walls. The wave-breakers secured a marina for small fisher boats and a big dockyard with a basin deep and long enough to host even big cargo ships. Around the dock, warehouses to keep the goods the ships brought were lined up, but right now the harbour was almost empty and Sonic wondered if a really big ship would look misplaced against the background picture of this serene little town.

"The beach looks nice with these waves," Tails said, "Looks nice to take a swim there, but at the water is cold as ice. There's some kind of cold current flowing along the coast. It stays freezing cold even in summer." A small smile lit Tails' face as he looked up at the blue hedgehog. "Not that you'd care..."

Sonic shrugged. "We got much more important things to do." He turned back to look down. On top of a hill just outside the village the big white painted observatory stuck its ball-shaped roof into the brilliant blue sky. Behind it, Sonic glimpsed the typical grey lines airstrips made from high up. "I see the airport," he remarked.

Tails nodded and banked the Tornado into a gentle turn.

"Was about time," Knuckles in the rear sear muttered under his breath. Right now he really didn't feel up for admiring the scenery and thinking about holidays. He had a broken Master Emerald left on Angel Island.

He would do whatever it took to restore it.

* * *

Sonic leaned through the taxi's window and let some money drop into the driver's hand. "Keep the rest for you."

"Thank you," the taxi driver smiled. "Bye folks."

Sonic watched the taxi pull back out and return to the city, then he turned around and his eyes wandered up the small road. It led to a white painted fence. A closed gate was blocking their path. The hedgehog casually jogged over to the gate where Tails and Knuckles already waited for him.

The fox rang the bell a second time. "Maybe he's busy."

"Hm." Knuckles gazed through the fence up to the observatory. "You really sure he can help us?"

Tails opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by the intercom that clicked in that moment. "Hello?" The voice sounded metallic through the loudspeakers.

"Hello Professor, it's Tails," the orange fox spoke into the small microphone.

"Ah, come inside, boys! Meet you at the door!" With a click, the loudspeaker cut off, a second later the big gate opened up. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles stepped in and made up the path.

The observatory looked as if someone had taken a giant football and slammed it with massive force into a cubic box, then evened out all dents and painted the complex a bright white color. Sonic cast his eyes over the lower part of it, searching for windows and finding them on third look, the bright walls reflecting the sunlight and blinding him. The round roof had to be made of metal, it twinkled in the sunlight. A giant seam showed where it could be opened up to reveal the telescopes.

Sonic's attention was pulled down when his ears caught the sound of a door opening. A creature in a white coat stuck his head out of an entrance, then upon spotting the three visitors stepped fully out into the sunlight, the color of his clothing matching the building he'd just emerged from. He waved an arm in enthusiastic greeting.

"Tails! Good to see you, my boy!", he called when they neared him and reached to affectionately ruffle the fur between Tails' ears. "You've been growing since I last saw you."

"I did?" Tails smiled impishly.

The white coated figure turned to the blue hedgehog at Tails' side. "You must be Sonic, Tails told me enough stories about you to write a novel. If I had any talent at writing, but I make a mess even out of shopping lists so I always forget something." He laughed and held his hand out at Sonic. "Well, nice to finally meet you."

Sonic's gaze wandered over the scientist while he shook his hand. He was a racoon, about as tall as he was, maybe a bit taller. The color of his fur was a greyish yellow, on top of his head the pelt was longer and completely unordered, a chaos of strands falling half over a face painted with a friendly smile, blue eyes behind round and slightly too big glasses resting upon Sonic with an almost childish joy, betraying a good sense of humor. It was impossible to judge his age closer than guessing him something around thirty.

Sonic grinned. "Nice to meet'ya too. Since you already know my name, how about giving us yours? Tails just called you Professor."

The smile grew to a grin matching Sonic's. "Well, that's because most people call me that. By birth my name is.. hold on a sec... ah, yes, now I know! Archibald Charles Franklin Amadeus Fitzgerald Whitherpooth. I always forget it."

Sonic chuckled. "Really? No kiddin'?"

"No, really true. As a kid I hated it, and when I grew older, nobody was able to remember that name. As you've just seen, sometimes not even me. Some people would of course call me Archibald, but at some point everybody started just calling me 'Professor'. So I go with that." He shrugged.

"Maybe we could think about a nickname," Sonic suggested.

"He'd probably forget it," Tails threw in with a grin from one ear to the other. "He forgets a lot of stuff."

"But never the important things!" The racoon smiled. "No, I'm no longer interested in nicknames I guess." He turned to Knuckles. "But I'm being impolite. We were not through with the welcome yet." He offered his hand to the echidna. "You have to be Knuckles then, guardian of the Master Sapphire on Divine Island, right?"

"Eh, not exactly," Knuckles replied slowly shaking the hand. "It's a Master Emerald and it's called Angel Island, but yes, I am Knuckles and I guard it."

Archibald smiled, blushing a little, and rubbed his hand after the echidna's firm shake. "Sorry, you must excuse me, I have a bad memory for people."

"No problem. As long as you can track down this thing up there..." The red echidna pointed at the sky.

"I quite certainly can," the racoon smiled, his eyes glittering as the conversation reached 'his' topic. "With these telescopes and the other instruments we can look millions of light years into space!" His voice sounded as if that was something to save the world with.

"Fine then. How about if we go in and see them?" Sonic tilted his head.

"Alright! Everybody follow me!", the Professor shouted and tore his door back open, disappearing into the building. The three visitors followed him in, through a long corridor to a staircase and then up several floors. The raccoon pointed into one of the corridors on the second floor. "There we got some rooms to sleep, bathroom and a living room."

Skeptically Sonic looked though the door. The blank walls were painted grey, the doors of a slightly darker color, but just as boring. "Somebody every told you that you need decoration? This looks like a warehouse."

Archibald shrugged. "I'm rarely down here."

After taking another stairway up, Sonic, Knuckles and Tails were directed through a single massive door. Stepping through and stopping after a few steps, Sonic's eyes wandered around in awe.

"Wow..." Above his head the round roof span over a room big enough to park fifty Tornados and almost as high as large. In the middle of it, a giant black tube pointed in a sixty degrees angle at the spot of the roof where it could be opened. Along all the walls of the big room, tables with computers, screens and machinery for obscure use were lined up like slot-machines in Carnival Night Zone. Turning his head, Sonic's eyes stopped on a poster-big photo. Interested, the hedgehog stepped closer. It showed stars, also galaxies, more than Sonic had ever seen or even dared to believe existed.

"You like it?" The Professor smiled at him. Or maybe at the photo?

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, it's _way_ past cool."

"It was taken here, through the telescope."

"You mean, when we look through, we can see _this_?" Sonic stared at the photo. It had little in common with a naked eye look at the night sky.

"Yes, and many things more. The world we live on is so small and there is so much to see out there. Wonders of nature. And we are just beginning to understand what is going on out there." The flicker was once again in his eyes.

"So, can we look at what we came for?", Knuckles urged. Right now he had something more important on his mind than exploring the sky with a long thing to look through.

"Oh, we need to wait until nightfall, you can only see the stars when it's dark. Even with such a big telescope. The light the sun gives us is enormous and so bright it covers everything else." The white coated raccoon made a wide gesture with his arms. "The sun is so big you could put Mobius hundreds of times into it without reaching its mass, the core is so hot the entire planet we stand on would melt to plasma within nanoseconds. Plasma is the fourth aggregate state and needs millions degrees to-"

"Professor?", Tails interrupted his monologue, "I know."

Sonic elbowed Knuckles, eyebrows raised, and leaned over to the echidna. "Did you get any of the fuss he said?", the hedgehog whispered.

Knuckles shook his head. "And I thought _Tails_ talks weird sometimes. He's harmless."

"So we can't do anything until it's dark?", Tails asked.

"Oh, sure. We can adjust all the computers, fill the databanks with what we know, and prepare everything. You help me, Tails. You are an excellent assistant." The raccoon took of his glasses off, brushed once over them with the end of his sleeve and put them back on.

"Oh great," Sonic muttered. "Anybody sad if I take a look around and see a bit of the town maybe?"

"No, no, not at all." Professor Archibald was already strolling over to a table with several screens on top. "Tails? Do you have any idea where I could have put the disc with that filter program?"

"Last time I was here and you searched it you had put it into a box on top of the cupboard in the room where you keep the coffee and the other supplies," Tails suggested. "Can somebody go look?"

"I'm not much of a help otherwise anyway," Knuckles answered. "Where's that room?"

"Okay, have a nice time, guys, see ya!" Sonic waved at them and quickly rushed down the stairs before anybody could ask him to search for something someone who had problems remembering his own full name had lost somewhere in a house as big as a stadium. He really didn't need _that_!

Down in the lobby, he decided to first take a look around in the house. Maybe there was something interesting to see. The blue hedgehog picked a door on the left, opened it and stepped inside. The dimly lit room was full of machinery, obviously he'd entered the generator room. Sonic returned to the corridor and took the next door to the right.

This time it was a long, big room filled with shelves containing boxes of all possible sizes. Light fell in between them, coming from a small window at the very end of the room. An open window.

Sonic paced the room, wondering whether the professor meant to have fresh air in his storage rooms or if he had forgotten to close the window, but a sound from the left froze Sonic's feet. A loud tinkling sound almost like a plate or a really big bowl breaking came from behind a few lines of shelves and cupboards, followed by a quiet curse.

"Hey, who's there?" Did anyone else work here? Sonic went around the shelves, then stopped when he spotted a silhouette against the light of the window. "Hey you!"

The person whirled around, Sonic glimpsed the outline of up-tipped spikes, then the stranger rushed over to the window at a speed matching Sonic's own and the blue hedgehog had the impression to see the floor under his feet glow for a split second as he paced the room without making a sound.

"Hey, come back!", Sonic shouted, hurrying after him as he jumped out of the open window.

Sonic somersaulted after him, landing on the grass outside. In the same movement he shielded his eyes from the sudden bright daylight, spotted only a dark shape speeding away and broke into a sprint after him.

His eyes had adjusted to the lighting during the few seconds it took the both of them to reach the fence; the jump over it was already a lot more elegant than the blind leap out of the window.

Sonic's gaze locked on the fleeing intruder. He could only guess that he'd intended to steal something, but been disturbed by Sonic's unexpected arrival. He was a hedgehog like he was, only black furred with red markings. His movements as he sped down the road to the city were smooth, his feet sliding along the ground instead of making steps.

"Shadow!", Sonic called.

The dark hedgehog almost seemed to stumble, turned over his shoulder to look at Sonic, then caught himself and accelerated again.

But the second he'd been able to see him had been enough for Sonic, he knew who he had in front of him. At least this would be a challenge. The blue hedgehog sped up, gaining a bit on Shadow. "Hey, what did you want there?"

Still no reply. Shadow slid around a corner, following the street towards the dockyard. His hoverskates enabled him to be as fast as Sonic was running, but they had one weak point the blue hedgehog knew from earlier encounters. They suffered from a leverage problem in sharp turns. Sonic's own feet didn't and after two turns of the road he was running alongside Shadow.

"Come on, since when are you stealing stuff? Even for you that's sick, Shads!"

A gaze like daggers out of Shadow's red eyes hit Sonic. "My mission is none of your concern. I do not know you. The Doctor told me I could get into contact with enemies. I consider you such. I give you this one chance to retreat."

Sonic narrowed his eyes, but still a grin briefly flashed over his face. "Sorry, can't do that. Since when does Sonic the Hedgehog run a fight?"

"Your speed is impressive, but you better use it to return to where you came from. You should not dare challenge me." Another glare locked on Sonic for a moment.

"Wouldn't be the first time, would it?" The blue hedgehog looked back at his black counterpart, for a second he thought he'd seen something like doubt or confusion in the red eyes, then the impression was covered by indifference.

"I don't know about any former times, but I know that you won't stand in my way. I had a mission. It failed because of your interference." Shadow's voice had hardened another bit. In his hand Sonic glimpsed the spark of a summoning chaos spear.

"Hey, hey, hey, easy! The chaos energy is behaving weird lately, you really should be-" Sonic started, but stopped with a yelp as he had to duck forwards to get out of the way when Shadow did indeed fire a chaos spear at him. Spinning on his heels and running backwards for a second, Sonic's eyes shot all the way open at the sight of one of the buildings losing a wall, all of its windows shattering under the explosion of chaos power.

Shadow sure meant business!

The blue hedgehog turned back to him, did three or four of his fastest steps, curled into a spin dash and struck. Together with his black opponent Sonic plunged into another wall, bounced off quite unharmed and regained his feet running, only to find he had to quickly dive for cover. A second lance of chaos energy zoomed by only inches above his head and through the open portal of another warehouse, then crashed into a heap of wooden boxes with a loud splintering noise.

Sonic bounced back to his feet, following Shadow to where the black hedgehog was racing around the next corner, simply blowing up the harbor equipment and machinery that stood in his way. _That black idiot is about to destroy half of the city!_ Sonic bit his lip and pushed himself to his top speed again.

Shadow heard the humming of Sonic's quick feet behind him and turned over his shoulder. "I warned you!"

Dodging another pair of chaos spears, Sonic still gained some more on the black hedgehog. "What the hell do you want, Shadow?! Where's the point in destroying all this stuff?!"

"I did not mean to fight you. This is your fault."

Sonic narrowed his eyes, took a short run-up and leaped to tackle Shadow, but the black hedgehog jumped, too. Instinctively Sonic curled up, two spinning balls of razor-sharp spikes hit in mid-air and the two hedgehogs smashed through another wall.

Shaking remains of splintered planks out of his quills, Sonic's eyes searched for Shadow. For a moment both crouched, staring into each other's faces, then Shadow leaped back through the hole in the wall. Sonic was after him in the same heartbeat.

"What did you want in the observatory's storage?!"

Shadow's reply to Sonic's question was a vague grunt. He stepped out of the way of Sonic plunging at him and sent another spear at the blue hedgehog.

It hit this time, even if not with full force. Sonic was thrown sideways and crashed into a staple of boxes that splintered immediately. For a few seconds he lay stunned and gasping, breath knocked out of him, then Sonic crawled to his feet and freed himself from the broken wood and frozen fish that had been in the box before.

"Not with me, Shadow. It takes more than some stinky ol' fish to get _me_ off your tail," he muttered as he raced after the black hedgehog once more.

* * *

Knuckles stepped out of the house, for a moment standing and overlooking the village below the hill, then started to wander down the field of grass that surrounded the observatory building. Tails and the professor had claimed they were almost ready and didn't need him to help them, so he should go and see if he could find Sonic.

The red echidna was glad they had not asked him to get another thing he didn't know out of rooms full of cupboards nobody knew what they contained. So far the less organized person Knuckles knew was Sonic. The professor was multiple times worse. Additionally, Knuckles rarely understood a single sentence of what he said.

But as long as they could find a way to destroy that Emerald-threatening _thing_ up there in outer space with his help, Knuckles didn't care at all if he was talking nonsense or living in an absolute mess. The only thing that mattered was the Master Emerald.

So the echidna was eager to get started. Where the hell was Sonic? Knuckles sighed. Somehow he guessed finding the hyperactive blue hedgehog out here would be as difficult as finding the professor's toys in his big house.

Suddenly Knuckles' feet stopped as his eyes trailed over the docks. From up here he could oversee the entire city and couldn't possibly miss the cloud of dust that now hung over the harbor area, neither could he overhear the sounds like distant explosions.

Knuckles frowned. He would take bets on who he was going to find down there.

* * *

"Whaaa!" Sonic yelped and pushed both of his feet into the ground in an attempt of a sliding brake. A mere meter in front of him, one of the loading cranes toppled, the tip landing with a loud splash in the basin. Sonic came to a stop with his hands frantically gripping the metallic stem of the crane. "That was damn close, you know?!"

Shadow looked down on him from where he stood on the arm of a second crane. "This is your last chance to leave."

"No way!" Sonic shook his head.

"Hmph, you asked for it." Shadow had barely finished speaking before he disappeared in a flash of light.

Sonic spun around, trying to see where he would rematerialize, but suddenly he was grabbed from behind and lifted off his feet. He struggled when he saw where to Shadow intended to carry him. "Hey, this – _really_ isn't a good idea, Shadow! I'm sure we can talk about it..."

"Talking's long over." Shadow replied, holding even an in earnest struggling Sonic without any obvious strain over the edge of the dock.

"You d-don't mean to do this... Shadow?!" Sonic stared down on the surface of the dark water. The waves slowly licked up the several meters high walls that surrounded to dock.

"I certainly do." Shadow spun him around, grabbing his throat with one hand. Sonic's eyes widened as his windpipe was squeezed shut. The black hedgehog pulled his blue counterpart a little closer. The tone of his voice was deep and almost indifferent, not a trace of satisfaction or anything else that could have been interpreted as feeling. He simply didn't care. "My mission failed because of you. You delayed me here. You dared to fight me. And now you're going to take a little swim out of this dock. You can crawl back ashore on the beach. If the sharks don't make you their lunch, I suggest you learn from this little exercise not to interfere with things that are none of your business." The black hedgehog stepped all the way to the edge. "Now have a nice swim."

With a smirk on his face, Shadow released Sonic's throat and let go of the blue hedgehog.

Sonic fell.


	6. Cold Waters

**Cold Waters**

The instinctive yelp as he fell came together with the reflexive gasp for air and the combination of both send the scorching feeling of being torn in half through Sonic's lungs.

But the short pain was quickly forgotten when the fall ended abruptly and he was smacked onto the stone-hard surface of the sea, the cold water immediately surrounding him, creating the sensation of millions of icicles piecing his skin. Freezing wetness drenched his fur, the weight of his pelt immediately coming to be what felt like tons heavier. It was as if cold hands had grabbed a hold of his ankles and were now pulling downwards to what would be a dark grave.

Struggling in reflex, Sonic's hand met something rough and he grabbed it with all his strength, pulling himself closer to it. His head broke through the surface and he spat out a mouthful of salty water. The thing he clung to turned out to be a thick rope. One of the hawsers the ships in the dock were tied with in parking position.

It led up the wall of the dock, but when Sonic tried to climb up, he realized how quickly the cold water was draining feeling and power from his arms. He kept falling back into the water, muscles already tired shivering. It was almost too much work to just hold on.

And he felt like he was still getting heavier with his fur sponging up more water with every passing second. "Hey, anybody up there?! Help!"

Sonic shouted several times without getting an answer.

The hawser slid through his fingers; the hedgehog didn't feel his hands any more. Panicking, Sonic paddled his feet as he sank underwater. Barely reaching the surface, he wrapped both arms and his legs around the thick rope, shivering and coughing.

"Help me! Help... I'm drowni..." The desperate call ended in a hard coughing fit when a wave washed over Sonic's head, the freezing salty liquid now even flooding his ears where they were folded back to press tightly against his head.

Sonic forced his nose back up and struggled to fill his empty lungs. He didn't want to die. Not like this. Not at all.

The hawser suddenly shook and the hedgehog almost lost his grip on it again as it did a short jolt upwards. He guessed the voice from above much more than truly heard something, but pricked up his ears. A bit of the water seemed to get out of them again.

There was really someone shouting. "Sonic! Do you hear me?! Sonic!"

The hedgehog spat out what felt like another liter of water and failed the attempt to look up. "Help! Get me... outta … here!"

"Hold on tight! I'm pulling you up!"

" _Hu.r..r..y._.." Sonic wanted to shout the reply; it only came out as a whispered gasp.

It seemed as if his saviour knew when it was time for hurrying anyway, the thick hawser started to move upwards, but not hastily quick, very slowly and cautiously. Sonic held it as tight as he could, but even though he was clearly moving upwards, he still felt it slide out of his failing grip. The water was dripping out of his wet pelt and it seemed as if it wanted to pull him along. Back down. Sonic squeezed what he couldn't feel any more, fighting against the small, tired voice in his mind that dared him to let go and relax, to stop the painful tension and release the cramps in his muscles.

But there was another voice calling through the haze of cold and exhaustion. "Hang on, I almost gotcha!", the deep voice shouted from above, reassuring as much as commanding, and finally Sonic recognized his friend. He had no idea what he was doing here, but at the very moment Sonic didn't care at all for any reasons.

Knuckles reached down from where he was crouching at the dock's edge when he had pulled Sonic into reach, took hold around his wrists and heaved the shivering hedgehog up onto solid ground. Sonic sank to the floor as a powerless heap of wet blue fur and spikes. He wrapped his arms around himself and stuttered a thank you, his voice shaking under his violent shivers.

"Sonic, what happened?! Half of the way here looks like a war took place there! As someone who can't swim, you really should stay away from places like this! How the hell did you get the idea to go close enough to fall into this basin?!" The way the words were rushing out of the red echidna showed just how alarmed he was. Usually, he didn't talk much... and he almost never spoke _that_ quickly.

"I … didn't fall … Shadow … threw me … in...", Sonic answered weakly, still unable to catch his breath.

"Wait... Shadow? … What's he doing here?! He _threw you in_?! He tried to kill you?! What did you do to him?!" Knuckles was still struggling to calm himself down with admittedly limited success. "You have been fighting? All this destruction around here?"

Sonic managed a nod in reply, it seemed an answer to the last two questions, Sonic couldn't remember the ones before. Somehow all he wanted was to sleep, no matter if it was cold or hard or –

"Are you hurt? _Sonic_!" Knuckles put a hand on Sonic's shoulder and propped him up a bit. "Man, you're cold as ice! Come on. You can't stay here." Not getting much of an answer, the echidna finally managed to handle the effects the situation had on _him_. He grabbed Sonic's shoulders and shook him gently. "Nothing broken or something? Sonic! Do you hurt somewhere?!"

Sonic shook his head, drunkenly focusing to look at Knuckles. "I … d-d-don't feel my f-f-feet … or h-h-hands... And I'm really … c-co-cold..."

The echidna grabbed Sonic at either sides and pulled him up. "Get up. If you stay here, you'll freeze to death."

"Bu-t-t I'm-m ti-tired. I do-on't wan-n-na walk," Sonic protested weakly. "C-c-can't we ju-u-st stay for a m-m-moment?…"

Knuckles shook his head. "No." He pulled Sonic's left arm around his shoulders to held steady the shaking hedgehog. "How long have you been in there?"

"Where's ther-r-re?", Sonic asked back, leaning heavily on Knuckles when he found his own legs were not quite reliable as they trembled as hard as the rest of him.

The echidna got a firm grip around his back. "'There' is in that freezing water almost getting yourself killed of course. What did you think?"

Honestly Sonic had no idea what he had been thinkning. All he knew was that he was overly cold and overly tired. "Du-u-nno," he mumbled.

"How long have you been in the water?", Knuckles repeated.

"Huh?", Sonic mumbled, starting to slow down gradually. "I r-really d-d-don't kn-know… Knux?"

"You keep walking," the echidna commanded, pushing him forwards.

"I'm t-t-tired."

"No breaks. What did Shadow want here?"

"How w-would l I kn-know?", Sonic grouched, "You're g-g-getting on my n-n-nerves."

"I gotta keep you awake and walking," Knuckles answered. "You're too cold."

"If you n-need company t-t-to talk to, I s-suggest g-go and search f-f-for someone else t-to annoy and stop b-b-bothering c-c-cold and tired he-hedgehogs." Sonic struggled to escape from the echidna's grip.

"Stop struggling or I'll punch you," Knuckles threatened, tightening his hold of him.

Sonic stopped his not very successful attempt trying to get away when he found he didn't have the strength to keep messing with Knuckles. "D-d-do what y-yo-you want, Knucklehead…"

Not as expected, Knuckles didn't react with anger and he didn't punch him like he normally did when Sonic was talking to him like that. Instead, he tilted his head at the hedgehog, the look of his violet eyes taking a softer shade. "You're lucky I know you are not entirely yourself.".

"I'm not…" Sonic frowned. "I- I'm v-very much m- myself and…"

Knuckles kept shoving him forwards. "We'll discuss that later."

Sonic groaned. Somehow it seemed as if he had no chance to escape the echidna. The hedgehog stared down on his toes as they walked. He couldn't feel anything below his knees... and he was starting not to care about that any longer.

"Come on," Knuckles said in that uncharateristically soft tone, "Tails and the professor are waiting for us. We need to get you dry and warm. You'll just get sick with that wet fur."

"Hmm," Sonic gave back. Right now it seemed to him as if the echidna was chatting nonsensically like he never had before. Every question, every word was worming itself annoyingly into Sonic's ears. He didn't want to do small-talk now, he was tired and cold and still shivering and groggy and he was COLD. Somehow the only thing he could think of while he slowly walked alongside Knuckles was how nice some kind of hot meal would feel in his stomach now.

* * *

"Hm." The grunt was Robotnik's only reply to Shadow's report about the last hours.

The black hedgehog looked up at the human scientist. He was, as much as Robotnik, angry that he hadn't been successful. His mission to get a new lens to replace the broken one had failed. Miserably. Because of that blue idiot that had been so fond of interfering with Shadow's business.

But besides his anger, Shadow felt somewhat odd. The blue guy had known him. He had known his name, his chaos spears, yes, even his fighting techniques.

"Doctor?", Shadow asked hesitantly after more than a minute of silence. "Who is that blue hedgehog?"

"His name is Sonic. He's the enemy." The human's voice carried a deep growl, almost hidden in his tone, but still showing his hatred.

"Did he cause the things that happen to these Chaos Emeralds?"

Robotnik snickered. "No." He turned away from Shadow and started typing something into his keyboard. "Leave me alone now, Shadow. Since we cannot go on as I planned, I will need to think of something new."

"Hmm," the black hedgehog nodded and left the room, slowly wandering through the long corridors of the underground base, his mind swirling with questions once again. But still, he found himself unable to find answers to them.

* * *

"Looks as it's all clear, baby...", Rouge mumbled, swiftly sliding through the half open window. "No guards around... Already asleep, huh?" The bat smiled, smoothly moving across the carpet, plenty of training making even footsteps in high heeled boots almost inaudible. To Rouge's ears that was, and it was a commonly known fact that bats possessed excellent hearing.

The laboratory wing of Mobius' 'most professional secret service'. The term was a laugh in Rouge's opinion, she hadn't seen any professional spy work, beside her own of course, since returning to her home planet. As loosely as the Mobians held it with governments and laws, they did with intelligence work. Well, the only real enemy there was that could be spied on was Dr. Eggman... and considering his usual tendency to broadcast his newest schemes... the need for spies was not quite big. The so called 'secret service' mostly investigated as a sort of police, dealing with the usual stuff...

This time Rouge had not sneaked inside the agency's headquarters to perform a little trick on their security system and snatch a fancy gem or two out of their paws. She hoped dealing with Omega's problem here using some of the equipment she didn't know where else to get it from. The place was the first thing that had come to mind.

Reaching the end of the corridor, the bat's gloved fingers rushed over a panel aside the door. After three attempts, a tiny electric beep sound forced a smile on Rouge's face and the door slid open to reveal a look at the wonderful, calm night outside. The white bat took a deep breath of cool air and looked up at the starry sky. "I wonder what's taking -"

"Infiltration successful. Entrance provided. Single other unit detected. Rouge the Bat. Unit is friendly. Weapon attendance ceased."

"Whaaa!", Rouge shrieked, nearly jumping out of her catsuit. "Omega! Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"Scan of allied biological unit detects physical stress," the robot snarled, from the sound of his voice just a few feet away. "No concrete danger apparent. Checking surveillance sensory... in progress..."

Rouge shook her head, a small smile making it back to her face. "Don't worry, we're alone. You scared the shit outta me turning up out of nowhere, that's all."

"Aborting surveillance scan?"

"Yes, stop it. You're wasting your energy." Rouge pointed behind herself. "Let's get in."

"Affirmative."

Rouge's large ears flicked at the sounds of big, metal feet impacting the ground next to her, and she uselessly stared at the place the sounds originated from... of course, there was nothing she could see. What was, as the bat reminded herself, the reason for this late night visit.

An hour later, the bat was close to truly helpless. She'd tried all sorts of glasses to look through to find a way of seeing Omega, she'd tried reversing the however generated effect with magnetic fields... she'd even put an electric current through her robotic friend, of course ensuring it wouldn't hurt him - as much as you could hurt a robot - or cause any damage. Nothing had worked.

"Okay, Omega, stand right there, okay?" She stepped behind a small wall and put on her sunglasses. "Now maybe this might help..." With little hope it actually would any more, Rouge activated the X-Rays.

"High energy radiation detected," Omega stated. "Probability of hostile actions. All inferior machines must be terminated. Open fire."

"No! Wait!", Rouge shouted, but it was already too late. A long cone of flames flashed across the room seemingly out of nowhere, covering up the X-Ray machine.

"Activating laser." The sizzling beam of red light was crossing the maximum violence the casing of the generator for the X-Ray device could take, the melting skin gave free view on the interior before a couple of small lightening bolts indicated short circuits and Omega's flamethrowers finished the deal off completely.

"Oh _great_..." Rouge groaned and covered her sensitive ears as alarm bells started an amount of noise far above what she could stand. "Quick! Let's get outta here!" Not checking if Omega followed, Rouge hurried out of the lab, just to find that the noise level on the corridors was much worse. Pressing her thumbs as deep as she could into her ear canals, the bat sank against a wall. Suddenly getting caught didn't matter any more... if just that painful noise would go away...

When it finally started decreasing, Rouge still could only hold her aching head, but then she noticed the cool breeze on her skin. Turquise eyes flying open after being sqeezed shut in a futile attempt easing the pain found moonlight on her face and the ground moving past her at high speed. She stretched out a hand and felt along Omega's giant claw holding her.

"What happened, Omega...?", she asked, slightly confused and massaging her temples.

"The conditions exceeded your operational range. Retreat was necessary to avoid damage to friendly unit," the robot answered her directly, slowing to a stop to let her down.

"Thank you, Omega...", Rouge mumbled as she was sat on her feet.

"Are you functional again? Do you require any repairs?"

The bat shook her head. "I'm fine. It was just way too loud for me, you know?"

"Understood." Omega was silent for a moment before continuing. "Is this unit responsible for the failure of the mission?"

"What? No." Rouge smiled softly and reached to pat the invisible armor of her robot companion. "The plan didn't quite contain blowing up half of the place and triggering all alarms simultaneously... but that it didn't work isn't your fault. I was running out of ideas anyway..."

"Does a search for possibilities reversing my optical status interfere with the mission of finding Shadow?"

Rouge shook her head and smiled again. "You're worried we can't get you back to normal, right? Aww. I'm sure, we'll find Shadow and turn you visible again... I just don't know how at the moment, so we'll concentrate on Shadow from now on, okay?"

"Acknowledged." Rouge could hear the unmistakable sound of the robot nodding his head. "Clues for Shadow's current location are still not available."

Rouge's hands fisted at her sides. "We gotta search better then."

* * *

"Ouch," Sonic mumbled, forcing himself to breathe in the hot, steamy air.

"What's 'ouch'?", Knuckles' voice asked from outside the shower he and Tails had forced Sonic into.

Right then Sonic hadn't cared at all what the others were doing to him. He did now. "I feel like I'm in flames. All over!"

"Good," was Knuckles only reply, and right now he sounded to Sonic as if he was lacking any form of sympathy for poor aching hedgehogs. "I'll see what the professor and Tails are doing to the tea."

Sonic turned off the water as soon as the annoying echidna was gone and quickly got out of the shower, grabbing a towel off a wall rack and eagerly rubbing the remains of far too hot water out of his fur. Being dry again would have been a great sensation on its own, but it didn't take away the pain like fire that was burning his entire skin. Somehow he wished it would have stayed numb.

The blue hedgehog slowly walked out of the room and then followed the sounds of voices along the corridor. His bare feet hurt each time they tipped the floor. Sonic entered a room and stopped in relief at the soft feeling of carpet under the momentarily so sensitive soles of his feet.

"Hey Sonic!", Tails called. "Come sit on the sofa, we made some tea!"

Sonic flopped into the couch at Tails' side and the fox handed him a big mug. The hedgehog sipped at the tea. It was almost as hot as the shower, but still felt a lot better.

Tails stood up and unfolded a blanket, wrapping it around Sonic's shoulders. "Here ya go."

Ah, that was better. "Thanks." Sonic smiled a little and took another sip of the tea.

"You feel your feet and hands again?", Knuckles asked from where he half sat on, half leaned against the armrest of an armchair.

"More than I'd like to." Sonic looked over at him past the rim of the mug, but the anger and annoyance he'd felt towards the echidna just a couple minutes ago were abating quickly now that he was getting warm. He was beginning to think he'd been stupid arguing with him.

A small understanding smile wrinkled Knuckles' lips as he acknowledged not only the words but the softening glance of the hedgehog as well. "It'll go away. You'll agree with me that this is better than risk having them stay numb forever of frostbite."

Sonic nodded, a shudder running down his spine at the thoughts of something like _that_. "I like burning," he muttered sarcastically.

"Sonic? Ah, there you are!" The white coated raccoon entered the room, waving something in his right hand and smiling as proudly as if he'd just unearthed a treasure after days of work. "Here, I found some warm socks you can have until your stuff is dry, found them in my cupboard, I wondered for a while what I kept in there, thought it could as well have been the candies, but it was good that it wasn't the candy, but the socks, 'cause you can use socks much more than candies right now, can't you? You know, I'm so horribly chaotic, but chaos is an accepted concept in physics, so–"

"Professor?", Tails interrupted. "Why don't you give Sonic the socks?"

"A brilliant idea, Tails. You and me, we should be working together more. Sonic." He passed the socks to the dumbfounded looking hedgehog and brushed some of his wildly growing long fur out of his brow before righting his glasses.

"Eh, thanks, Professor." Sonic put the mug with the still steaming tea on the small couch table in front of him and leaned down to put on the socks. He turned one of them around in his hands with another baffled look, taking in the checked pattern in green, red, orange and brown, briefly wondering what kind of drunken idiot had designed these things, but his bare feet were getting cold again and so he shrugged off the small doubts of vanity that said he couldn't possibly let such an outstanding object of misguided taste near the two fastest feet in the universe. He simply didn't want them to be the two fastest icicles in the universe instead.

When Sonic sat back upright, he spotted Knuckles' grin. "Is that the new fashion, Sonic?"

"This is what makes me so special, Knux." Sonic grinned back, taking the mug again. In spite of their funny look, the socks were warm, the blanket was too, and with the pain slowly easing away, the hedgehog felt much better already. Almost comfortable.

"Huh?" Knuckles frowned.

"I don't look stupid if I wear freaky socks, they look cool once I wear them because of me." Sonic took a long, pleasurable sip at his tea.

"Ah yes." Knuckles rolled his eyes in annoyance, then turned to the professor and Tails. "So, now that Sonic is feeling _normal_ again, can we get to the interesting part?"

The scientist had followed the byplay without much interest, but now that Knuckles asked for his work, he nodded fiercely. "Of course."


	7. Starlight

**Starlight**

"Wow..." Sonic breathed in awe. He was lying on a comfortable chair-like thing, looking through the gigantic telescope above him.

He saw stars.

Millions of them, millions over billions or even more, but the hedgehog lacked a term for numbers that felt big enough to count what he could see. The sky wasn't black with stars on it, it _consisted_ of stars. They sparkled at Sonic's wide open eyes in all possible colors, the majority of them something between white and blue, but some were red, yellow, even green. Small, spiral forms surrounded with a purple aura faded into a long white and yellow band. "It's amazing..."

"What do you see, Sonic?", Knuckles asked from where he stood to the side.

" _Stars_..." The hedgehog was still merely whispering his words, his gaze lost in a world of twinkling shiny lights. "This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"And nobody has ever seen exactly the same things you see right now, and nobody ever will," the professor said and Sonic could hear in his tone he was smiling.

"Huh? Why not?", Knuckles wondered.

"Because everything we see when we look into the sky is a brief glimpse of a moment... And it is always a look into the past."

"The past?", Sonic wondered, his eyes following a small pattern of bluish stars into a turquoise nebula.

"Yes, light, like everything else, needs time to travel through space. It moves at light speed, which is the fastest velocity possible, nothing besides light can move that fast."

"Well, that's worth a challenge," Sonic muttered.

"Oh Sonic, you'd lose that challenge, believe me," Tails laughed.

The professor chuckled. "You, like everything else that has a mass higher than zero, cannot reach light speed. Your mass is proportional to your velocity and grows exponential if you accelerate. The energy necessary to bring you, yes even the smallest atomic particles, to a speed only _near_ that absolute limit is higher than exists in the entire universe."

"I don't get it." Knuckles sounded annoyed. Sonic thought it amusingly familiar.

"Me neither. But if I ever break that record, I'll let you know your theory is fuss." The hedgehog grinned, still studying the view through the telescope. "So, can we go back to the thing about the past? Why is everything I see the past?"

"Because of the huge distances in space," Tails explained. "Space is so big that even light needs millions of years to travel through it. The light of the sun needs a few minutes to reach our planet, the next star, our neighbour-star so to say, is a few light-years away."

"Tails is right. And most of the stars you see at the nights sky are thousands or even millions of lignt years away," the professor added. "So every picture you see now is a look into a long ago past, the light needed that long time to transport the pictures from the star that emitted the light to your eyes. Some of the stars you see there now might be gone already. That purplish galaxy you can see on the left is 250 billions of light-years away. There is no way telling for us what happened to it during that time."

"Wow. So if there were some aliens in space ships out there looking at us now, they would see something that happened long before, right?" Sonic pulled himself loose from the stunning sight and slid off the chair. He looked at the red echidna next to him. "They might as well see your ancestors flying Angel Island for the first time."

Knuckles sceptically raised his eyebrows, but the professor nodded. "It would be possible."

A thought struck the red echidna. "So, if we use that thing to look at this Emerald-manipulating whatever-it-is, we will see it years ago?"

Tails giggled. "No, it's not that far away, it'll be only a minute or so. Nothing that matters at all."

"Actually, we _always_ look into the past. I see you now that way you were a few picoseconds ago." The white-coated racoon smirked. "But these short times don't matter; it's completely normal."

Sonic scratched his head. "I admit I don't really get this. How about if we see that we find that thing now?"

The professor nodded. "I'll need a moment to adjust the telescope; Knuckles can have a look at the stars too if he likes."

Sonic nodded at the echidna. "Really, it looks amazing!"

"Okay, I'll try." Knuckles sat on the chair below the oculars and looked through the telescope. He whistled through his teeth. "It's really beautiful. And this is all for real?"

Tails laughed. "Very real, Knuckles. No fake stars up there or anything."

For a moment Knuckles relaxed backwards into the chair, his eyes wandering though a maze of wonderful light. He liked this. He liked this lot. It was even a better view than on a clear evening from the island's highest volcano. It was impossible to recognize any constellations; the sky was a complete mess of stars, but it was by far the most beautiful mess Knuckles had ever seen.

The picture suddenly shifted, then blurred, spinning around in a way that made Knuckles dizzy and he was glad as it turned black for a second. He blinked a few times and as he looked again, the image was showing a few small stars in the background, but the echidna didn't have any eyes for them.

The middle of his sight was filled with an orange object, erratically shaped, spinning not quite steadily around itself so that it seemed to tumble through the black nothingness of space. It was moving slowly towards the left edge of his vision and Knuckles had the vague impression that it was growing as it did.

A shudder ran down Knuckles' spine. He could name no real reason for his discomfort, it just looked like an orange, dimly glooming stone, but it gave him the weird feeling of deja-vú without being able to place it. He felt, no he _knew_ it was a bad thing. Just seeing it let something prickle in the back of his mind, some sense lower than instinct, the feeling the opposite of what he felt close to the Master Emerald. He quickly pulled away from the oculars and shook himself.

"You okay, Knux?", Sonic asked, looking confused.

Knuckles nodded quickly. "Hm. I just don't like it. Is giving me the creeps."

Sonic quirked an eyebrow, but didn't comment.

The echidna waited impatiently until all the others had had a look at the thing as well. "Now, what do we do?"

"We need to analyze its structure, its course, if it will hit the planet, if it does in which angle..." Tails shrugged. "We need information about it before we can think of destroying it."

Knuckles tapped his foot, something he'd never thought he would find himself doing. "So, how long will that take?"

"Professor?" Tails turned to the raccoon.

The white-coated took off his glasses and turned them around in his hands. "At least the entire night, maybe tomorrow too. It's hard to say."

Knuckles sighed.

* * *

Hours later, Knuckles was still sitting at one of the tables, watching Tails and the professor walking from one screen full of numbers and diagrams to another. He listened to their conversation, a conversation consisting of a seemingly nonsensical chain of words without a meaning. Knuckles had never heard any of them, to him it was as if they were talking in a completely unknown language. Maybe that way the case anyway.

The echidna yawned and stood up. It seemed as if he could be of no help anyway, the two seemed to have completely forgotten he was even here. Sonic had left what appeared a long time ago and Knuckles decided to follow his example.

He slowly walked down the stairs and stopped as he entered the living room. Sonic was curled up fast asleep on the seating of an armchair, his head on the left armrest, his feet in the freaky socks on the other.

The thought that perhaps the hedgehog was smarter than he was occurred to the red echidna. Flopping full length on one of the couches, Knuckles decided he could as well try the same, but in spite of his tiredness, sleep was a long time coming. In front of his closed eyes, the orange gloom was still tumbling through the darkness of space.

* * *

"Doctor?"

Robotnik jerked awake in his seat to the sounds of Shadow's voice. "What do you want?" A look at his screens showed him that it was shortly after midnight and he frowned, turning around to face the hedgehog-black-arm clone that didn't know it was exactly that. "It's late. Why aren't you resting?"

"I was," Shadow replied slowly. "I couldn't sleep. I had a dream... I guess. I was running… through a long corridor, calling a name without getting an answer…" The black hedgehog paused, once shaking his head before returning his gaze to the doctor's face. "Do you know anyone called _Maria_?"

"No," Robotnik lied, eying him. He definitely had to get his plans to the next level.

"I've been thinking," Shadow continued, "about many things. About that idiot blue hedgehog for example. And why he knows me. Maybe talking to him could help me get my memory back." He looked up at Robotnik.

"I don't think so," the scientist started," and meeting him is always dangerous; he's our worst enemy. Maybe _I_ can help you."

"Really?" Shadow's red eyes went wide. "You said you need all the Chaos Emeralds for that."

"I will try with the one a robot patrol found outside the base a few hours ago. The Chaos Emeralds changed a lot during the last time while the asteroid comes closer to our planet. I built a machine using this new power." The human stood up.

Shadow nodded almost enthusiastically and was outside the room already. Robotnik looked after him. It looked as if he'd finished the material for the next step just in time. Shadow was getting out of his control.

It was time for Plan B.


	8. Anti-Chaos

**Anti-Chaos**

Sonic sneezed himself awake from a sound sleep and needed a few seconds to remember where he was. He sat up, rubbed his nose and stretched, taking a look around, then stood up silently and tiptoed to the door, trying not to wake Knuckles on the couch.

Once in the corridor, Sonic took the stairs up and stuck his head into the big lab. It was as quiet as the rest of the house and Sonic soon discovered why. Tails was asleep with his head on a desk, using one of his arms as a pillow. The professor hung snoring in another chair, his glasses slightly out of place. The computers seemed awake as ever, the screens showing a rushing amount of numbers, graphs and diagrams.

Sonic shrugged to himself as no-one else could see it anyway, and slowly went back downstairs, trying to remember where the others could have put his wet shoes yesterday when Knuckles had brought him here. After a few minutes of search, Sonic found them in the bathroom, tidily hung up aside of his socks and gloves, all of them dry again. Relieved to get rid of them, Sonic pulled off the funny socks and put on his own stuff, then decided to get outside and see if he could get some fresh bread for breakfast. Certainly the others would appreciate that too. Plus, there was nothing to do in a house full of sleeping people and an annoying sense of beginning boredom was already creeping up to him.

When the hedgehog opened the door, morning welcomed him with crisp air, the slightly salty smell of the nearby ocean and a bright blue sky. "Another day in paradi – at-choo!" Sonic shook himself at the second sneeze. "Man, I really should stay away from swimming pools..."

"The subject is apparently not fully healthy."

Sonic spun round at the sound of a robotic voice behind him, but froze in mid-movement. There was no one to see - but he'd heard someone talking? Sonic blinked and shook his head. "Maybe this is worse than a simple cold... I guess I'm hearing things."

A giggle from behind let the hedgehog whirl back once again, and this time he spotted a white-furred bat leaning leisurely against the wall of the building directly aside the door. "Don't worry, Sonic, it's not as bad as you think."

"Rouge!"

"Correct." She crossed her arms and lowered her head a bit, looking at him past her long eyelashes. "We came to ask you a few questions."

"WE?" Sonic looked around again, then stiffed at the typical sound of a metallic body moving. He knew that sound very well, and given all his experiences with Eggman and his hedgehog-hunting doomsday machines, it triggered the small button for his body's adrenaline supply.

Rouge laughed, clearly having sussed him out in no-time. "Oh, don't panic, there's no Eggman robot for you to smash right now. It's just Omega and he's with me."

Suspiciously Sonic scanned his surroundings once more. "Okay, is that a new trick or something? I can hear him but –"

"You can't see him, true," the white bat interrupted him with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. "Something weird happened with a Chaos Emerald. He's invisible since then."

Sonic's jaw dropped. "Omega is – _what_?"

"Invisible. I thought you'd know the word, Sonic." Rouge turned to fully face him.

"Invisibility," Omega's snarling voice put in from Sonic's left, "is a physical condition defined as the property of an object to neither reflect nor absorb electromagnetic waves or energy emitting quantums. The current state of this unit is not to be clearly classified as all physical laws imply perfect invisibility requires no electromagnetic signals to interact with the invisible object. The functionality of this unit's optical sensors obviates the possibility of the exact physical condition to be invisibility."

Rouge turned to where the robot had spoken from. "In my terms something is invisible when I can't see it. So, you are invisible."

"Invisible," Sonic echoed, staring at the seemingly empty space where the E-series robot stood. "And a Chaos Emerald did that? Maybe Tails would find that interesting to know; there's been some trouble with the Emeralds. They suddenly disappear, set things on fire, very weird stuff." The hedgehog decided not to tell Rouge about the Master Emerald. Knuckles would probably kill him if he found out he had as much as voiced the name of his precious gemstone in presence of the reknown treasure huntress who totally had a weakness for the thing. Instead, Sonic settled for a simple, much vaguer phrase. "Something's happening to the chaos energy."

"This is all very interesting," Rouge shook her head. "Really, if I had any time... But I don't. I'm coming to ask you about Shadow."

Sonic snorted. "You're fast. He was here yesterday. How did you find out?"

"Research in media databanks indicated definite traces of Project Shadow's specific combat activities." Although he knew he was there, the blue hedgehog almost jumped at the sound of Omega's movement again.

"We saw pictures of the dockyards here in the news," Rouge translated. "I know Shadow's chaos spears. That was him, and he was fighting somebody who gave him a challenge. I don't know many people who can do that." She shrugged. "So we came here, I asked around and found someone who had seen a blue hedgehog, a two tailed fox and a red echidna up here, so I figured where to find you and your pals." The bat stepped a little closer to Sonic and suddenly there was a pleading expression in her turquoise eyes. "Sonic, if you know something about Shadow tell me."

The hedgehog raised his eyebrows. "You don't know where he is? I mean, you two are best friends, aren't you?"

Rouge nodded almost hesitantly. "Shadow's been missing for almost a month now. He often leaves for a week or so, but usually he comes back. I'm worried that something happened to him."

"Well, he seemed okay yesterday. At least physically," Sonic started.

"What do you mean, physically?" Rouge's eyes widened a fragment.

"He didn't know me," Sonic said slowly. "I mean, really not. He didn't know my name, who I am, what I am capable of. He was even surprised of my speed." Sonic paused a moment. "You know, we've never been friends, allies if at all. But yesterday was... He threw me into the dock. If Knuckles hadn't come by more or less by chance, you wouldn't be able to speak to me now."

The bat gasped. "He... He really tried to... _kill_ you? That's what throwing a non-swimmer into the water is..."

Sonic took a slow breath. "I wouldn't go that far. I did yesterday, sure, but once I thought it over..." The blue hedgehog looked into Rouge's eyes. "He didn't know me. He maybe also didn't know I can't swim."

Rouge lowered her head and sighed.

Very well seeing her discomfort, Sonic still couldn't keep his questions in. "Rouge? Do you have any idea what happened to him? He's with Eggman, doesn't know people, he -"

"He's _with_ _Eggman_?" Rouge's head snapped back upright, a dangerous glow ighting in her eyes.

Sonic blinked at her expression. "Didn't I say so?"

"Eggman...", the bat mumbled, her voice slightly earning a darker undertone. Sonic didn't know her too well, but she was quite obviously mad now.

"I thought he'd learned his lesson by now and wouldn't work with Eggman again," the hedgehog noticed. "But on the other hand, if he doesn't remember..."

"Something terrible must have happened to him," Rouge muttered, completely ignoring Sonic's comments. "I'm _sure_ Eggman's behind this." She suddenly looked at Sonic, decision written all over her face. "Thank you. I must go now."

"All inferior Eggman machines must be terminated," Omega shouted. It seemed slightly out of topic to Sonic, but probably that was Omega for you?

The blue hedgehog shrugged. "Give that Eggbreath and Shadow my regards, and be careful with any kind of chaos energy."

Distractedly Rouge inclined her head. "Bye, Sonic." She turned around and started flying down the road towards the fence. "Come on, Omega," she waved at the robot.

"Affirmative," the machine replied and stomped after her, his heavy steps clearly audible, although Sonic could see nothing of him besides the small clouds of dust his stomps whirled up from the ground.

The hedgehog stood for a minute looking after the strange pair. Tails would be quite surprised if he told him about the invisible robot, and what Rouge had told him about Shadow was also quite interesting. It didn't explain his behavior, but then again, this was about Shadow... and who could seriously claim to fully understand the black hedgehog's intentions? The two persons closest to achieving that near-miracle had just left, Sonic mused. He shrugged off his thoughts after a moment and jogged down the road to do what he'd originally planned. Get breakfast.

* * *

In a world more distant to Mobius than one could imagine without getting the mind into a state of strain, separated in both time and location, far enough to allow for calling it another universe, a lavender cat slowly walked through the entrance of one, if not the most, sacred and well-guarded places in her kingdom.

The sounds of her footsteps sending chilly echoes across the small room, Blaze went up to set the seven Sol Emeralds, forever in her responsibility to guard and protect, down onto the shrine close to the middle of the chamber. For a second or two her gaze rested on the gems, her mind recalling yet another chase after her nemesis Eggman Nega to retrieve the precious and powerful stones. A chase that had just ended.

A small smile lit on the cat's face as she stepped away from the shrine, moving over to the few candles that decorated the walls. She didn't need a lighter to get them back on after her time of absence; having been gifted with pyrokinetics by birth she allowed a small flame to grow on the tip of her index finger and let it relight the candles one by one.

Enjoying even the tiny warmth they generated, the lilac cat sat down on the floor where she was. Of course, she could leave to get some well deserved rest now, but it was the mood of the place that had caught her for now, and for a while she just planned to bathe in it.

Eyes having closed halfway, her gaze aimlessly wandered around the room, and it didn't take long for her mind to follow it smoothly; first it played around her just finished task again, then it slowly drifted to a more abstract field of thoughts. She glanced over to the dimly glowing Sol Emeralds again, remembering their counterparts from a world far away. Seven as well, but not warm in nature, to her they were just what their name made them: chaos.

Blaze wasn't sure if the number had any meaning, after knowing that in a second world another set of Emeralds with similar and yet so very different powers existed… She just wasn't sure. Her eyes opened all the way again as a new thought struck her, breaking into her half-minded pondering.

_In Sonic's world…. There were_ eight _Emeralds_. She looked back to the shrine. If so many things in these two worlds are alike… _Have the Sol Emeralds… ever had a Master? Sonic and his friends had claimed the Chaos Emeralds needed it. Didn't the Sol Emeralds need one? If they didn't… why didn't they? If they did… where was it? Was its power enough to keep them in check even over distances so big neither she nor any ancestors she knew of had never gotten any idea of its existence?_

Blaze frowned. No one on her planet seemed to know of such a thing. No one had even told about it, but the purple feline was aware how much old wisdom had gotten lost already. Maybe she would find out one day. Or she was just not supposed to know?

* * *

"So, are you gonna tell me what you found out?" Knuckles folded his arms and looked between Tails, the professor and the big screen they stood in front of.

"Of course, Knuckles." Tails nodded at the raccoon and the scientist pressed a few buttons. The screen started to show a computer model of a glowing yellow ball, surrounded by circles that held smaller balls. "This," Tails pointed at the image, "is a picture of our solar system. This is the sun and here are the planets on their courses around the sun. And this is Mobius. See the moon?"

Sonic nodded. "So far I get it," he grinned. "Go on, Tails."

The fox turned back to the virtual picture and his finger pointed at an elliptic line that crossed all the others, neared the sun in the middle of the image and lost itself at the corners of the model, so that it showed only less than a third of the elliptic shape.

"This is the course of the mysterious thing we saw through the telescope yesterday," Tails explained, his finger ending up aside of a small orange dot. "Right now it is about here."

"So, what is it?" Knuckles frowned, this really wasn't the time for astronomy lessons.

"Firstly, in this context," Archibald took over, "it is a comet."

"A comet?", Sonic echoed. "You mean, one of these little things that return every few years?"

"It makes _me_ more think of the Black Comet," Knuckles muttered.

Sonic turned to him for a moment, then back to the other two. "Don't tell me there are aliens aboard that want to conquer us. We had enough of that a while ago."

Tails shook his head. "No aliens. Quite certainly not. It is too small. It has only a radius of about two thirds of a meter at its thickest point."

Sonic tilted his head and shot Knuckles a sideways glance. "That means it's more or less as big as the Master Emerald."

The echidna grunted.

Tails took that moment to simply keep talking, knowing full well that there was no reason to let them press that topic any further right now. "We know thousands of comets. Some return every two or three years."

"Some also pass by our planet only once in a century, or only every thousands of years. That depends on how long their orbit is and how far it takes them." The professor stretched his hand out and his finger drew along the elliptic line the comet's orbit formed on the picture. "This one needs about 800 years for one circulation."

Sonic turned to Knuckles. "But you said your legend about this is a few thousand years old?"

The red echidna shrugged. "It's just some old legend, they are not exactly trustworthy, Sonic. You know, one person tells another and the thing is as big as a fist. This person tells someone else and it is already as big as a melon. Then as the Master Emerald. You see?"

Sonic nodded. "Like when you're playing Chinese Whispers."

"Possible," Tails admitted, "but there may be another reason for it. The last three times the comet came inside the inner regions of our solar system, Mobius was always on the other side of it. It never came that close. The effects it had should have been a lot smaller with the sun as a kind of shield between that thing and the planet."

"So, it just passed by?" Sonic quirked an eyebrow. "That explains why everything returned to normal after a while." He looked over at Knuckles and the echidna nodded.

"Then we can just wait and everything will be fine?"

Tails and Archibald exchanged a glance and both shook their heads. "I'm afraid that's not the case, Knuckles." Tails' ears drooped a little and he pointed at the screen. "See? This is where all the planets and other objects will be in three days."

The image changed, showing the planets move faster around the sun. Sonic followed the line that depicted the course of the comet. "It'll impact," he said, looking at where the miniature comet had just hit the miniature planet.

Tails nodded. "Yes."

Knuckles took a deep breath. "This can't be good."

This time it was the professor who shook his head at him. "No. You're very right; it is not good at all." He took off his glasses and started to clean them with the sleeve of his coat. "We analyzed the make-up of the object. It is made of some very solid, crystallize material. Very similar to a Chaos Emerald."

"To be precise, the readings it gives," Tails took over again, "are, as far as we can tell, very similar to the energetic outlet of the Master Emerald, but it is poled differently."

Sonic blinked. "What does that mean?"

"It is like… matter and anti-matter," Tails answered.

Knuckles rolled his eyes. "What _is_ matter and anti-matter?"

"Matter is what this universe is made of," the raccoon said and put his glasses back on. "You know, normal atoms. Protons, electrons, neutrinos…"

Knuckles looked at Sonic. The hedgehog shrugged. "I'm as helpless as you are," he grinned sheepishly.

"Let me try." Tails waited until he had their both attention. "You could see those two things as complete opposites. Like ehhm… fire and ice, hot and cold, wet and dry. They can't exist together at the same place. That would cause a … logical paradox."

"Okay, I understood it until that point with that paradox." Sonic smiled with a shrug.

"That's enough I guess." Tails grinned briefly. "The main point is that you cannot have those two things in one place."

"What happens then?", Knuckles asked although he was afraid to already know the answer.

"For matter and anti-matter…" Archibald held his hands out at Knuckles, brought them together and jerked them loose again. "BANG!" He grinned as if that was a great thing. "The blast you could get out of an anti-matter bomb would be…"

Sonic shook his head. "We better don't tell Eggman about that."

"I'm sure he knows. It's a well-known thing. It's just hard to get anti-matter." Tails twirled his namesakes. "But back to the point. We could very well call that thing anti-chaos, 'cause it's the complete opposite of the chaos energy as we know it."

"Anti-chaos? So at least that thing's got a name now." Sonic rubbed his nose. It itched and felt kinda weird.

"So, we cannot let it stay here once it landed, can we?" Knuckles folded his arms on his chest.

Tails shook his head. "No. Something constantly unbalancing our chaos energy… that'd be horrible."

"Can we – atishoo!" Sonic's speech was interrupted by a sneeze. He wiped his nose and started again. "Can we destroy it?"

Tails and the professor simultaneously shook their heads. "No. It is that solid that it won't burn up during entering our atmosphere. And there is no way telling what would happen if we destroyed it and set all this energy free. It could blow up the planet or something."

"Then wha-" Another sneeze stopped Sonic's question in half.

Tails raised his eyebrows at him. "Bless you. You really snatched a cold there, didn't you?"

Sonic grunted. "What I was about to ask: what do we do?"

Tails shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea. We got three days to think of something."

Knuckles let out a desolate sigh. "Oh _great_."

* * *

Robotnik typed a numeric code into the panel aside of the door and it slid aside. He gestured inside and Shadow entered a brightly lit lab. The hedgehog's eyes travelled over the machinery, screens, consoles, keypads and a chair-like thing in the middle of the room. Shadow tilted his head.

"Take a seat." Robotnik pointed at the chair with an inviting gesture.

Shadow slowly moved over to the chair and sat in it. It was as uncomfortable as it looked. "What now?", he asked.

Robotnik walked over to one of the consoles and typed a sequence. "Now my friend... I'm one step closer to the Eggman Empire!"

Shadow opened his mouth to wonder about his comment, but stopped when metal restrains shot out of the sides of the chair too fast even for his reflexes to follow, closely locking around his legs and arms and body. "Hey, what's this about?", he growled.

"That," Robotnik laughed, "is my plan finally able to truly work." He walked over to Shadow.

The hedgehog struggled, in vain attempting to get out of the cold metal bonds all around him. "You... lied to me!" He angrily glared at the human. "You aren't my friend! You don't want to help me!"

Robotnik laughed again. "See how smart you are." He leaned down to face the hedgehog. "You disappoint me, Shadow. The Ultimate Lifeform should have been able to understand my doing."

His hands reached behind Shadow's head and he pulled a metal strip around his brow that disabled the hedgehog to move even his head.

The human leaned down closer to him, staring into his eyes. "You are a weapon, Shadow. A brilliant weapon, and the one who can use you in his war has already almost won." The scientist laughed. "There is only on problem about you. It's in here." He stuck his finger at Shadow's forehead. "You are held back by the personality your creator, my grandfather, gave you. I have tried hard to build a robot that would be able to hold that same powers as you do. I did not succeed. Therefore, I decided to make _you_ the best of all robots."

Shadow growled lowly. "You won't get away with this," he snarled. "I will -"

"Nothing you will. You don't stand a change." He stood back upright and walked over to one of the numerous machines, pressing a few buttons.

Shadow's mind was racing. His blood was close too boiling with rage. Rage for being betrayed. Deceived. Used. The rest of him was confused. With Eggman's speech automatically little pictures had started to lick into his mind. Pictures of a blond girl, a space station, other people, that blue hedgehog and some that seemed to be the hedgehog's friends. Also of fights, robots and destruction. He knew all of this, and in the same time he didn't. He couldn't deal with all those random pieces of information right about now. He didn't even manage to think about trying a chaos teleport to get out of the most immediate trouble.

But he didn't get the chance to order his mind. Robotnik had turned around, in his right hand holding a grey, fist-sized gemstone, in his left a half-round, weird shaped – thing. The human pulled a piece of machinery closer to Shadow's involuntary seating place and plugged the stone into a small hole in an arm of the machine that held around Shadow, placing it in a way that the hedgehog could see nothing but the greyish light stinging his eyes.

"Look at it, Shadow. This is _power_." Robotnik laughed from where he stood beside Shadow.

The hedgehog stiffened when he felt cold metal on his head and he grunted in pain as it seemed to cling onto him. He tried to get a grip on the Emerald's power and felt it just as something strange, formless, uselessly slipping away from him in spite of his efforts. "What … is that?" He was starting to feel sacred, scared of being helpless, scared of being in the hands of someone who'd deceived him so easily, scared of not knowing what was going on and of being unable to influence what happened.

" _This_ is also power. _MY_ power."

Robotnik's laughter echoed in Shadow's ears while the Chaos Emerald started pulsing and glowing even brighter. A stinging pain drilled itself into his skull, tearing all conscious thoughts asunder. It was as if a vortex had built up inside his head, sucking in all the fear, the confusion, the hatred and everything else, even the pain.

Until he was no more.

…

…

…

…

"Report status."

A clear line of numbers fluxed at the sound of the Master's voice, building a second layer over the image of a brightly lit lab.

"All systems working," the black hedgehog answered flatly.

"Follow me for check-up."

"Affirmative."


	9. More Catastrophes, Anyone?

**More Catastrophes, Anyone?**

Shaking his head to himself, for no other reason than this whole situation, Knuckles stepped outside the house. It was nearly midday and he'd decided to go for a little walk, out of the simple lack of anything else to do, especially nothing he could even remotely consider sensible.

Tails and Professor Archibald had locked themselves in the lab a few minutes ago, assuring the anxious echidna he could do nothing to help them out and that they were doing just fine on their own, and Sonic being the only on that would have been there to keep Knuckles company had been convinced to go back to bed and for now stay there. When everybody stood up this morning it had been quickly revealed that Sonic's little swimming adventure at the harbor wouldn't stay without unpleasant after-effects; the hedgehog's sneezes of the day before had used the night to grow to an actual cold and Sonic had been looking shitty enough for Tails to do his best talking him out of any activities for the rest of the day, and much to Knuckles' surprise Sonic seemed to be feeling sick enough not to contradict. At least, considering the hedgehog was asleep now, there was one good thing about that – he couldn't get bored that way. Out of several years of experience with him, Knuckles knew there weren't many more dangerous things than a bored blue hedgehog.

Knuckles wouldn't admit it, but _he_ was very close to bored. He was of absolutely no help to Tails and the professor while they searched for a way to get rid of that Anti-Chaos thing. It had been Knuckles who'd pressed for finding out what was going on, it was the Master Emerald _he_ was supposed to protect that was in danger, and he could do nothing about it. It made him feel useless, and Knuckles hated to feel that way.

Usually, Knuckles sat down next to the Master Emerald when he felt troubled or needed to think... but there was no Master Emerald. In fact, _that_ was the problem. _Sonic_ went for a run when he was bored or had something on his mind, and because he didn't know anything else to do, Knuckles had decided to try this strategy. If it solved the problem of how to spend his time, it'd be a win already.

The echidna slowly wandered out onto the meadow around the observatory. The sky was the brightest blue and it looked like a nice warm early autumn day, but somehow it wasn't as warm as it should have been. A sudden wind tore at Knuckles' long quills and looking out at the sea where it came from, the echidna's steps faltered.

A few miles out across the sea, a thick layer of black and grey clouds were rapidly moving towards the coast and Knuckles gasped at the sight of them building small tube-like protruding forms that span wildly as they reached for the ocean below. A few seconds later, they met the surface and whirled the water upwards. Knuckles' gaze lay fixed on the group of whirlwinds moving towards the coastline; he watched two of them smash into the wave-breakers outside the harbour, the big rocks the walls were built from being thrown up and crashing back into the water. From the distance it resembled pebbles being thrown into the water to form pictures of circular waves, but the sea was too stormy to show anything beyond a short splash of white where the rocks fell back in.

The short resistance didn't seem to slow the tornadoes down by any visible rate; they had already reached the basin Knuckles had pulled Sonic out of just a day ago. One of the tornados stood almost still the middle of the dock for a few seconds, splashing the water out of it, then it moved to follow its brothers that were already wrecking havoc between the dockyard's buildings... Or what was left of them after Sonic's and Shadow's fight there. Now the whirlwinds were busily tearing apart the rest of the warehouses.

Still frozen in his position and not truly daring to imagine what would happen once the whirlwinds made it into the city, Knuckles frowned in confusion when they suddenly vanished from one blink of his eyes to the next. Instantly the freezing wind was gone and everything left of the dark cloud was a cluster of white cottony wisps, gently blown asunder by the soft breeze.

Knuckles blinked, forced his open mouth to close again, squinted up at the sunny sky, shook his head and considered pinching himself, unable to believe what had just happened. It was warm, he could hear small birds singing somewhere nearby and on the meadow a few hundred meters away, a double line of golden spinning rings glittered in the sunlight.

A wonderfully peaceful day indeed. If someone would have told him now that not even a minute ago… Knuckles shook his head. He wouldn't believe a single bit of it and be able to trust in the day being as beautiful and peaceful as it looked.

But he knew it wasn't. He knew this was just the beginning. Suddenly it felt cold again, but this time only to him.

* * *

The only thing that betrayed the presence of anything other than shrubbery and rocks were the almost well-hidden antennas that stuck out from underneath a brownish bush. Almost… but not good enough for her, having a lot of talent for finding things others didn't want to have found.

A smug impression flashing over her face, Rouge stopped fluttering and spread her wings, gently gilding down to the ground. She stood for a moment, looking around, then discovered the small grating under the bush that had caught her attention in the first place. She grabbed it with both hands, heaved and pulled it open.

Whistling through her teeth, the bat stuck her head into the tube below, leading vertically down into an unknown darkness. Rouge had seen many tunnels in her life and crawled into just as much. With a swift movement she was inside feet-down, her hands and feet holding her between the walls of the narrow tube as she slowly started to slide down.

Her feet found the ground about ten seconds later. Using her hands to orientate herself in the darkness, Rouge found three horizontal tunnels that started from the spot she was at. She bent down to take the one in front of her, it didn't really matter and that way spared her the trouble of turning around in the narrow space. Keeping her wings folded tightly against her back, the bat started to crawl forwards.

After what felt like a way too long time giving the dark tightness, she caught a glimpse of light and soon after the tunnel ended at another grating. Rouge perked her sharp ears, carefully listening for any sounds from the outside, before she dared to push against the grating and pull herself out of the small tunnel.

She beat her wings once while she took an attentive look around. When she was sure her blood was flowing back into them, she stopped and started walking along the corridor she'd landed in. Its walls were grey, naked concrete, interrupted only sometimes by random tubes and colorful electric wires coming out of them. The ceiling was equipped with large lamps, far too bright for Rouge's taste. She preferred dim lighting.

Reaching a corner, the bat cautiously stuck her head around and froze at the sight of a black figure. He stood perfectly still, facing away from her into another unoccupied corridor. On top of his head, surrounding the top three of his spikes and his ears, Rouge spotted some kind of helmet. She looked around again, to make sure nobody else was there, then stepped fully into the open corridor and cleared her throat. "Shadow?"

The black hedgehog slowly turned around, moving like in slow motion and somewhat stiff. He stared straight in her direction, but there was no recognition in his ruby eyes. No, there wasn't any expression at all. It wasn't even that he was really looking at her, it was more like through her. Tens of small lights on his helmet started blinking as he spoke, tonelessly, cold and mechanic. "Intruder. Priority one order: Destroy all intruders." He lifted his right hand and Rouge gasped at the sight of a small laser gun.

"Shadow!", she called desperately, "Shadow, it's me! It's Rouge! Don't you remember me? I'm your friend!"

The hedgehog did a few stiff steps towards her. "Destroy intruders."

Only reflex saved Rouge's life when he fired at her. She beat her wings and hurtled herself out of the line of neon green light. "Shadow! Please! Snap out of it!"

The black and red hedgehog skated forwards, following her, the weapon in his hand still pointing at the bat. "Destroy." There was still no feeling in his face and voice.

Rouge zig-zagged through a few more shots and dived down for him, knocking him off his feet and landing square on top of him, momentarily stopping his attack on her. She grabbed his head, trying hard to look into his unseeing eyes. "Shadow! Please try! Fight it! You know me! You don't want to do this! Shadow!"

His red orbs stared up at her. Lifeless. Steel. No thoughts. No feelings.

But he had stopped struggling and he wasn't shooting at her any more. The lights on the helmet blinked erratically. "System failure...", he breathed. "Call... for... backup... Destroy intruders..." His arms with the gun moved slowly back up.

It was then that Rouge realized there was no way to help him now. She needed to find out what Eggman had done to him to be able to possibly reverse it. She pushed off and hovered above him. "I'll be back, Shadow. Don't worry, I'll help you." She had to dive aside when Shadow, still on his back, fired a shot of green energy up at her. Rouge turned and hurried her way back, noticing that maybe it was at least an act of mercy _he_ didn't worry.

When she reached the tunnel she'd crawled inside through, her ears picked the sounds of robots nearing, either to search for her or to answer Shadow's call for backup. She figured it was better she wouldn't be around to be found by them and slid back inside the small tube, pulled the grating over the opening and crawled into the darkness.

She stopped when she reached the upwards path, suddenly noticing her shivering. Huffing a shaky breath, the bat wrapped her arms around herself for at least a tiny bit of comfort, a sudden sense of helpless desperation causing her to do something she hadn't done in a very, very long time.

She cried.

* * *

"Sonic?" Tails poked his head inside the bedroom.

"What?", the hedgehog replied, voice still sounding hoarse and muffled.

The two tailed fox stepped inside. "Do you _now_ want some food? I know, you said earlier you're not hungry, but-"

"Tails?", Sonic interrupted him. "What's on the menu?" He popped himself up on his elbows.

"Whatever you want." Tails sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. The last time Sonic had been sick was almost two years ago by now, but Tails still vividly remembered trying to force his surrogate brother to eat something _healthy_. He'd decided it was better he ate anything at all, and less annoying and stressful for all of them.

Sonic tilted his head, his pointy ears still droopy. "I can't really think of anything. My head feels kinda empty."

"Mine too," Tails admitted, "but not because of being ill. We sat in the lab for hours and I can't think anymore I guess." He sighed.

"You? Can't think anymore?" Sonic shook his head. "Don't worry, this can't last! Impossible. Tails always thinks. Law of nature!"

The fox laughed. "I hope so. Right now I feel like the most stupid person on the globe."

Sonic sneezed before he mastered an answer. "Nah, you're not. I guess Big is. Or Amy." He grinned.

Tails giggled. "Amy's just love-stupid. That's also a law of nature."

"Yeah…" Sonic shook his head. He didn't really feel like thinking of clingy girls right now. "And, did your thinking get to some sort of result?"

Tails shook his head and sighed deeply. "No, not the least bit of an idea. And while we can't think of anything, this Anti-Chaos keeps coming closer. Knuckles was outside for a while around midday and saw a few tornados rip the dockyard apart. They came out of nowhere and disappeared as quickly. He says he's sure it'll be getting worse."

Sonic frowned. "But it doesn't help if you sit around and beat yourself up for lacking brainwaves."

Tails shook his head again. "You're right." He looked back at the hedgehog. "And, what about you?"

Sonic grimaced. "Oh, my nose is clogged and itches all the time, my head aches, my throat hurts, I'm cold all the time and I feel kinda heavy. I really forgot how much being ill sucks."

Tails laughed sympathetically. "You should be glad you're that rarely ill."

"I guess so." Sonic wiped his nose and grinned. "You were about to offer me some food?"

"Oh, sure. And I recall you were not sure what you wanted?" Tails grinned back. "So I guess I will have to think of something, huh?" He looked at the hedgehog with a thoughtful expression. "Spicy chilli dogs won't be good for your throat if it hurts anyway. There's no need making it worse. I'd say eat some soup, but I know you don't like it."

Sonic smiled. "Soup's not a food, it's just water with a bit of stuff in it. If I want water, I drink."

Tails grinned. "That's what I thought you'd say." He looked at the hedgehog again. "So no chilli dogs and no soup." He shrugged. "Knowing what the kitchen and the storage look like, our chances to make edible stuff aren't too great anyway… Maybe it'd really be the easiest to just be uncreative and order some pizza?"

Sonic nodded after a moment. "Yeah. Pizza's fine. I don't really want to know how sick one can get eating stuff coming from the Professor's storage…"

Tails giggled as he stood up. "So I'll order us some pizza. Do you want a tea while we wait?"

"Sure." Sonic flopped back into his pillow and crossed his hands behind his neck.

Twenty minutes later, the two were sitting both on Sonic's bed, each of them with a pizza cardboard on their laps and busily stuffing their faces.

Tails shoved the last piece into his mouth and watched Sonic still fighting with his round food. "It's kinda hot, ey?"

Sonic looked up at him and pulled a face. "Yep. And swallowing hurts. But I guess I really am hungry, so I decided to ignore it."

Tails giggled teasingly. "You know, your talent for being sick isn't really great. You could just whine…"

Accepting the joke, Sonic grinned. "Whine? ME? I never do stuff like that. And Knux would make fun of me."

Tails shrugged. "I don't think so."

"Come to talk of him, where is he?"

Tails pointed at the ceiling. "Up there. Getting on the Professor's nerves." The fox paused a moment, suddenly looking serious. "I've never seen him like that. So… worried and … _impatient_. He's worse than you."

Sonic nodded, not commenting on Tails' last statement. "It's about his Emerald, and that thing's the most important object that exists for him. I dare say it's his life. It's as if I was in danger of never being able to run again… That'd be horrible."

A brief smile flickered over Tails' face before being replaced by seriousness again. "I just don't know how we can help him."

Sonic looked down on the rest of his pizza. "Me neither," he allowed. "It's not that we could simply talk to him or give him a hug like I'd do for you. That wouldn't help it. We need to solve this Emerald problem."

Tails nodded slowly and put his pizza cardboard onto the bedside table. "And I still don't know how."

Sonic looked back up at him. "We have to find a way get it off our planet. Like putting in on a space ship or rocket and shoot it back into space, somewhere so far away it won't come back. But we'd need so big energy tanks for such a rocket… like Chaos Emeralds, but they're screwed up and don't work… and something else… as the Professor said, space is sooooo huge…"

Tails' head snapped to him, his ears perked like someone had just electrified him. "Say that again!"

Sonic raised his eyebrows. "Say what again?"

"What you just said!"

"That… space is big…?"

"No, before!"

"That we don't have any Chaos Emeralds and aren't likely to get any either?"

Tails jumped to his feet, his twin tails twirling so fast Sonic thought they'd knot up every second. "Sonic! You're a genius!"

The hedgehog grinned and rubbed the back of his spiky head. "I am?"

The little fox almost leaped at him as he gave him a squeezing hug. "You are! You just solved the energy problem! What would I do without you?" He jumped backwards and rushed out of the room.

Sonic stared after him. "I'll give that compliment back, little bro. Glad to help." He shook his head, put the pizza away, not really hungry anymore, seized one packet of hankies that lay aside of his bed, took aim and threw it at the light switch. He felt like he needed a nap on his full stomach now.

And on Tails' sometimes weird behaviour.


	10. Plans in the Making

**Plans In The Making**

The wave was taller than any the houses. It rolled towards the beach, throwing up a few boats, then reached the sand and the palm trees splintered like matches when they came in contact with the raging mass of water. Rolling forwards, the wave met the first line of houses and split up in many smaller parts, each of them racing into the free space between the houses. People screamed and ran as fast as they could and suddenly everything was black.

"This amateur video was taken three hours ago at Emerald Coast, when an unexpected tsunami destroyed six villages along the known to be normally peaceful beaches. The numbers of casualties are so far undetermined. Police and fire brigade still search for survivors in the ruins." The black image had been replaced by a young female rabbit. She held a microphone in her hand and stood in front of a bluish background. "It is still unknown how the tsunami could built. Experts claim Emerald Coast to be not usually in danger of such high waves."

She continued speaking after a short pause and while she did, a new video was zoomed to fill the TV screen. "Huge rainfalls during the last night have flooded a large number of Marble Zone's underground tunnels. The inhabitants are trying to pump out the caverns. The extent of the damage is likely to be fully visible in a few days when all the tunnels are accessible again."

The reporter's speech was accompanied by images of several Mobians carrying buckets full of brownish dirty water or holding long pipes into what appeared to be small lakes, but were the entrances to Marble Zone's underground parts.

The rabbit was zoomed back onto the main screen. "In our next report an intense rain like that would have been able to prevent most of the damage." Again the picture changed to show a large field, the ground covered with black dust. Remains of blackened trees occupied the landscape like weird skeletons. "Yesterday's fire in Hill Top Zone burned down nearly a third of the Zone's forest. With the help of fire-fighting planes the blaze finally could be contained. What exactly torched the forest in the first place remains a mystery." The female reporter reappeared on the TV. "Now to politics…"

Sonic switched the TV off at that point, that wasn't the least bit interesting. He dropped the remote on the sofa aside of him and wrapped his woolly blanket tighter around himself while he stared at the blank screen. Knuckles was right. It was getting worse.

"Erhm…"

Sonic looked up at the sound of Knuckles clearing his throat. He didn't even notice him coming in. "Hey Knux…"

The echidna walked up to him and looked down on the hedgehog slouched on the couch. "Here, I got you some more tea. And I really did find some dice." He put everything onto the low couch table and took a seat beside the hedgehog. He looked at Sonic again. "Having your serious five minutes?"

Sonic smiled a little. "Maybe." He paused a moment, thoughtfully looking at Knuckles. "I just happened to watch the news. The freaking Emeralds are playing with the weather. There was a tsunami at Emerald Coast, a big fire in Hill Top and flooding rains in Marble Zone." Sonic paused again. "You were right."

"I know," Knuckles said quietly. "I damn know. And I wish I wasn't." His gaze dropped. "I wish I knew something I could do. Something useful, something that'd help. Instead, I'm sitting here playing entertainer for sick hedgehogs." He froze and looked up at Sonic when he realized how _that_ must have sounded. "Sorry, I didn't mean-"

Sonic seemed quite amused instead of angry. "I didn't ask for it." He smirked for just a second. "But I understand what you mean. I don't like being damned to wait either, but Tails said he's got a plan. And if Tails has a plan, it can't be that bad anymore."

"I was up there when I asked the Professor for any games he got. He answered with on of his cryptic sentences and I needed a minute to figure what he said. Then I asked what they were doing there, but they both refused talking to me. As if they'd forgotten I was there. So I left." Knuckles shrugged.

Sonic grinned. "Tails is not talking to you? That's a good sign. He always refuses talking to me when he makes some kind of great new invention."

"Still, I wish I could actually help…" Knuckles sighed.

Sonic put a hand on his shoulder and waited until he looked up to meet his eyes. "You know, you _are_ helping out. A whole lot. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't know that much about this Anti-Chaos and it would be a lot harder to find a way to get rid of it."

Knuckles blinked. "I … never thought of it in those terms…"

"See? You and your sense for the Master Emerald and that thing told us what we are looking for. Tails might be our little genius, but he'd be doomed without your knowledge as starters. He wouldn't even know what he's looking for." Sonic smiled at the red echidna. "Okay?"

"I guess." Knuckles slowly inclined his head at the hedgehog and the smallest impression of a smile lit his features. "So, do you tell me what we will do with these things I wasted ten minutes of my life searching for?" He pointed at dice cup and dice.

Sonic snickered and sat upright. "Sure."

Half an hour later, when they started yet another round of the game and Knuckles had lost multiple times already, he silently wondered what had driven him to promise Tails this morning he'd take care of Sonic and keep him occupied to make him sit still for another day.

Maybe it had been that Tails had assured him that after another day of rest Sonic would be almost completely fine again, and that looking at the hedgehog, Knuckles had no other chance than to believe it. Sonic had looked really sick yesterday and slept most of the time, now he still was a little paler around the muzzle than usual and who knew him well - and Knuckles did - could see how his ears still drooped a little forward, always a clear sign that Sonic was either very tired or not healthy, but he had stopped sneezing every few minutes and you could actually talk to him without him sounding like a strangled frog. He really was a lot better, and in much better mood.

And maybe Knuckles just didn't want that hyperactive freak to risk that rapid recovery by trying to go for a run because he got bored sitting still. Because he knew that very likely they would need him later. In a _healthy_ condition.

... or maybe the echidna was secretly as just bored as Sonic and they could as well be bored together.

Knuckles took the dice cup from Sonic, shook it and with little enthusiasm turned it around, looking at the mess of numbers. "Just some more useless crap. Not even a pair…", he muttered in annoyance.

"Knux? You won." Sonic pointed at the dice.

"I… won…?"

"Sure, this is a street. One, two, three, four, five. Street. You win." Sonic grinned.

Knuckles looked at the dice a little longer. "Alright," he smiled then and put them back into the cup. He started shaking it again and looked sideways at Sonic. "Now I'll show you…"

Sonic's grin broadened. "I can't wait to see you try."

* * *

"A patrol of inferior machines circles the base and returns to each entrance with a frequency of ten times an hour," Omega informed Rouge.

The bat nodded and looked at the seemingly empty space where Omega stood. "That gives us six minutes to get inside."

The two team members had spend two days spying on Eggman's underground hideout and trying to find a good way to sneak in unnoticed. The tunnel Rouge had used to enter the base the first time was out of question if she wanted to take her robot friend along; Omega was too big to fit through. It had been already small for Rouge to fit in.

Finding the admittedly very well camouflaged entrances had taken one day already, but by now Rouge and Omega knew exactly where each of the three existing ways to get inside were situated.

In the morning of the second day they had 'kidnapped' one of Eggman's patrol robos, an action that had proven just how useful Omega's temporary invisibility could be on occasions. Overriding their capitive's circuits, Omega had copied all data from the robot's databanks, what had equipped the duo with detailed plans of the base's interior.

Of course the little guard robo had not possessed any of the information Rouge was truly looking for. Those would be well locked in Eggman's central computer, likely secured with several codes and passwords.

But judging from the blank regions on the robo's maps, Rouge and Omega now knew exactly which parts of the base were level one security, parts that the normal robots were not allowed to enter, just Eggman himself.

And soon _they_ would. Uninvited of course.

Rouge smirked at the thought. It wouldn't be the first Eggman-base she broke into, but usually she just smashed whatever robot got in her way. This time, the plan included staying completely unnoticed. She wanted to sneak in, hack into Eggman's computers, find out what he'd done to Shadow and how it could be reversed, and sneak out again. If Eggman found out she and Omega had been inside his hideout and used his computers, he would certainly be able to guess what they had wanted and maybe take countermeasures. That would make her plan more difficult, and Rouge preferred keeping things easy. Usually, the method of least resistance was the fastest, and less stressful than bothering with the mad scientist in person and his personal army of robots on top of it.

The white bat leaned back on the bed she was sitting on in the small motel room in a town a few miles away from the base. They would wait until nightfall. Inside the base, the time of day was completely unimportant, but outside darkness would give her some stealth. Not that her companion needed it…

Rouge smiled. "You know Omega, I'm starting to think it was good luck that that Chaos Emerald turned you invisible. It will make this job a lot easier."

She could hear the robot shift. "This unit does not plan to keep this state. Design of the E-series robots did not contain total loss of optical reference to innate mechanical make-up."

"So you mean you're not supposed not to see yourself?" Rouge giggled.

With the always snarling, metallic sound of his voice and his not changing tone it was hard to tell, but to her he had sounded grouchy. The bat tilted her head. It was difficult to say if Omega had truly crossed the line between being an extraordinary machine and becoming a true artificial intelligence. A robotic being. Metal Sonic had quite certainly done that, so Rouge knew it was possible.

In Omega's case… Sometimes he was so straightly logical, she could see nothing but the robot in him. Then again, she felt like he did have some sort of feelings. And there was still the question why he stayed with her and Shadow after his 'mission' had been finished. Was it that he liked them? Or just that maybe his mission to destroy all Eggman robots couldn't be finished, there were still new ones built? But after all, she felt he was enough a person to call him 'he' instead of 'it', right?

Rouge looked back at where she knew the robot. "Don't worry, we'll try and find a way to make you visible again." She frowned. "Although I have no idea how. But I'll go crazy if I have to talk to someone I can't see for much longer."

* * *

"Okay, what do you think?" Tails looked between Knuckles and Sonic.

"It sounds _crazy_." Knuckles shook his head. "You actually want to _use_ that dangerous Anti-Chaos-thing? As a big battery?"

Tails simply nodded, though after days of working out the plan he'd wished for more enthusiasm. "Yes."

"I guess it could work," Sonic agreed with the fox. He understood if at all half of the lecture Tails and the Professor had given him and Knuckles during the last half an hour, but what he understood sounded logical. The hedgehog turned to Knuckles. "I mean, why not? Tails used a Chaos Emerald before to power his plane. Technically, you somewhat use the Master Emerald to keep your island afloat. So why shouldn't it be possible to use that Anti-Chaos stone to power a rocket?"

Knuckles grunted. "It is dangerous! Don't you see? Nobody knows how to control all that power!"

"Knuckles, listen," Tails tried again. "We do not need to control it. Not the way you are thinking we need to." He paused for a moment until Knuckles looked at him. Although being the youngest of the group, Tails could be surprisingly patient. "We know different ways of using the Chaos Emeralds and their energy. One is a direct way. That is what Sonic does when he turns super and Shadow when he uses Chaos Control or his Chaos Spears... Or how you use the Master Emerald. This direct way acquires a close bond between the being that uses the power and the source of chaos energy it draws upon. And I'm sure we all agree with you that this is a kind of contact we can and will not risk with this thing."

Knuckles had relaxed a bit during Tails' speech, his temper ebbing away and he looked almost calmly at the little fox, waiting for him to continue.

Tails did. "Then there is a second way. One that is a lot less direct. This is what I did when I used the Chaos Emeralds to power the Tornado or the rings as my usual power source, as they are also a form of chaos energy. Eggman does that with most of his robots that use rings or Emeralds." Tails stopped for a moment to give the echidna some time to think. "This version of using the Emeralds' powers fuses a bit of the energy into a machine. It's technically similar to using a battery. Just a lot lot more complicated. The Anti-Chaos stone will have enough power to lift the rocket and shoot it millions of miles into space, fast enough to reach escape velocity from our solar system, too. The whole thing won't be more than two times as heavy as the stone itself, already including it of course. The matter of energy should be a cinch."

Knuckles slowly nodded. "Okay, maybe this is not as insane as it sounds."

Sonic grinned. "Tails' plans are the best of all. And this one can't fail. No way in hell."

"Huh? Why not?" Knuckles frowned at the hedgehog.

Sonic's grin broadened. "I gave him the basic idea. And MY plans also never fail. So, success is almost guaranteed…"

Groaning, Knuckles shook his head and elbowed him, but secretly he was glad that Sonic lightened up the mood a bit. He just didn't need to show him that…

Sonic looked back at the fox. "Okay Tails, now that we all support this little idea, what do we do now?"

"By now we know where the comet will impact in exactly…" he turned over his shoulder to one of the lab's screens "… 29 hours and 15 minutes." Tails turned back to the others. "On one of the biggest glaciers of Ice Paradise Zone. Which brings up a new problem."

"So? What problem?" Sonic quirked an eye ridge at his adopted brother.

"We cannot land there. The Zone's glaciers are known to be full of gaps you can't see from above. Besides, I wouldn't want to get close to the landed Anti-Chaos with any kind of sensitive machinery. It's highly likely to cause great interference."

"Meaning what exactly?" Sonic still frowned.

"It means we have to land in one of the less snowed-in valleys and walk all the way up the mountains to the glaciers and search for the meteoroid," Tails explained.

"Wait…" Knuckles looked at him. "I thought you said we needed to take all the material you need to build this... rocket along."

"Knux is right; carrying it will be stupid." Sonic rubbed his left ear.

"I didn't plan to carry all the material," Tails smiled. "We'll fly over the glacier on our way there and I'll throw it down. With a parachute of course, so it'll safely land in the snow."

"Okay, I get it. What about accommodation? Sonic said he's been there and even without his storytelling I wouldn't say this place sounds good for camping," Knuckles noticed.

Tails nodded. "I already checked that out." He turned to Sonic. "As you know, Ice Paradise is a popular location for all-year winter sports. Most of them take place in the lower regions of the mountains, closer to the valleys and the villages there, but some people like doing sports in the glacier area. Skiing sometimes and glacier climbing."

Sonic nodded. "I know."

"There are huts up there you can rent for holidays," Tails continued, "We should be able to find one that's close enough to the impact spot so we can pass the nights there without freezing to death."

"Good. Then what?" Sonic looked around.

Tails grinned. "What are you waiting for? Start packing! And don't forget your hankies, Sonic!"

The blue hedgehog grimaced. "Very funny. But it's a lot better already, honest!"

"He's right. I guess we can risk taking him along…" Knuckles smirked, feeling suddenly a lot better now that some kind of action was actually in reach. Good enough to make fun of Sonic.

"I think so. But Sonic, you really have to think of a nice warm scarf and woolly gloves and socks." Tails giggled, adding some more teasing to Knuckles' words.

"Of course. I recommend you do the same," Sonic grinned, fully able to ignore their needling. "None of us has a winter fur and I don't plan to stay there long enough to start growing it."

Tails shook himself. "Good idea. I don't need to be there and itch all over for a week and then come back home where it's warmer and itch again when it grows back! I'll put on the warm pullover I got in the Tornado."

"I'm fine without that stuff," Sonic declared.

Knuckles looked him up and down. "You would bust a pullover anyway; those things you got on your back aren't exactly good for clothes." He grinned.

Sonic shrugged and softly ran a hand through his blue quills. "Admit it, you just envy me for having such nice sharp spikes."

Knuckles grunted. "As if…"

"I'm a hedgehog. And hedgehogs have sharp spikes. This is how we are supposed to be." Sonic stopped brushing down his quills, arms folding on his chest as he glanced sideways at the red echidna.

"I can kinda see that point." Knuckles nodded, but there was a small smirk on his face. "You would look stupid without them though. Not that you look a lot more intelligent _with_ them, but they sure suit you…"

"Knux?"

"Yes…?"

"You know you should be fast now….?"

"Sure…" Knuckles spun on his heels and rushed over to the door and into the staircase, Sonic directly on his heels. "Sonic?! Didn't Tails say you should rest today?!"

"I don't care what Tails says! I'm the older one!", Sonic called back as they raced down floor after floor of the staircase.

Tails stood in the lab, looking after his two friends, still hearing them shouting. The fox looked at Archibald. "Sometimes I wonder if that truly is the case."

He giggled and the raccoon laughed, and both walked after them, just like the hedgehog and the echidna paying no attention to the small robot drone that hovered near the top of the round roof, the Eggman logo on its side blinking and its camera and microphone still focused on the now empty room.


	11. Impact

**Impact**

The comet - a constantly growing dot on the starry sky - was painting a long reddish line onto the dark firmament during entry.

Knuckles stood under a group of fir trees, his arms tightly folded on his chest and his gaze firmly locked on the small light. Looking at it intensified the small headache he felt for so long already he was about to become oblivious to it, just now as he stood in the cold, silent evening, he was intensely aware of it again.

The echidna's violet eyes remained on the sky even as he heard the sounds of footsteps crunching on the snowy ground.

Sonic stepped up to his side silently and cast a look around. The high mountains formed dark shadows against the night firmament and the small houses of the village behind them with their warm lights and decoration looked like taken directly from a kitschy Christmas movie. All in all a peaceful place and a peaceful night. Looking at the red echidna at his side whose tense stance wouldn't fit into the picture at all and following his gaze, Sonic lifted his eyes up at the sky. It was beautiful, and even with the knowledge that this orange light up there was a big threat, Sonic couldn't avoid finding it pretty in a way.

Knuckles certainly didn't. His brow was wrinkled in a frown and he looked up at the comet as if he wanted to destroy it by glaring it to death.

"What are you thinking about?", Sonic asked eventually, unsure where to start or if to start at all.

Almost a minute went by without words and Sonic thought Knuckles had decided to ignore him, but then he spoke quietly. "I can feel it, Sonic."

Sonic raised his eyebrows and shot him a sideways glance. "What do you feel?"

Another long moment of silence passed. "It's hard to explain. It is a bit like the feeling of the Master Emerald calling for the Seven. It's... something almost like a painful longing. It's crazy, but I think... I think it's lonely..." Knuckles paused, eyes still on the streak of gloom above their heads. "Can't you feel it?"

Sonic frowned. He hadn't considered it before. While it was true that Knuckles' sense for the chaos energy, especially for the Master Emerald was a lot sharper than his, he could sense the Chaos Emeralds, maybe even better than Knuckles could, and he could draw on their powers.

Even though he decided to ignore Knuckles implying this piece of stone could be having anything like feelings of loneliness, Sonic knew it was something like chaos energy after all. More out of simple curiosity than anything else Sonic closed his eyes, mentally focussing on that little sense deep inside he consciously used just rarely. A reaching out for that familiar warm energy that was part of everything around and concentrated itself in the Chaos Emeralds.

It was there. Sonic could sense a small pulse of power not too far away for him. There was a Chaos Emerald somewhere and for a second or two Sonic was tempted to really reach for its power and draw just a bit of it to himself, but he shook his head against it and concentrated on what else was there.

A tiny notion, like not rain but the knowledge it would be raining in several hours gained through the smell of the air… Or something like that. Sonic focussed on it, dragging himself closer to it, to get a glimpse of true feeling. And suddenly it was there, flashed uncomfortably by as if grazing his mind to put a halt to his intrusion and he felt, not heard, something akin to an odd giggle.

Jumping back in reflex, Sonic quickly pulled away from it, forced his eyes back open – and found himself sitting in the cold snow, noticing that he must have jumped also physically.

Knuckles was looking down on him with his eyebrows raised. "So, you can feel it."

Sonic nodded, his ridged quills moving less with his head's motion as they usually did. "Yeah..."

"I told you it's bad," Knuckles noticed and held his hand out at the hedgehog to pull him back to his feet.

"But just when I really concentrate on it," Sonic continued skipping on Knuckles' comment and shook himself once, his spines slowly starting to lower again. "I'm kinda glad about that though…" He paused as a thought struck him. "Do you…?"

Knuckles looked at him seriously. "Certainly not as intensely as you just did. I'd need to focus on it too, but I feel a little distant tingle of it, all the time. Even when I try to sleep." The echidna shrugged as if to get rid of the thought. "Like Tails said, it's a thing similar to the Master Emerald, so it's natural I feel it more than anybody else."

"Hmm…" Sonic nodded, forcing himself to look back up at the sky.

For several minutes they stood in silence once more, neither really finding anything further to say, so they just watched how the comet got closer and closer to the black shapes of mountains and then disappeared from sight behind one of them. A few seconds later, a brief bright light flickered from behind the mountain, surrounding its summit like a corona, and the two observers heard the crashing sound as the impact shook the very ground beneath their feet, then it was silent again and the only lights remaining were the stars above.

Sonic pulled himself loose after a few minutes. He threw a glance at this friend. "Tomorrow, Knuckles. Tomorrow."

The echidna didn't look at him. "Hmm."

Sonic waited another moment. "Why don't ya come back inside? We already ordered some dinner. I just came to get you. If we don't hurry Tails will have finished everything before we get there." The hedgehog's triangular ears lowered a little at his friend's apparent lack of interest, but he kept talking anyway. "It doesn't help standing here, you know? You'll only snatch a cold."

Knuckles finally looked at him. "I thought you would…"

Sonic smiled, glad there still was some sort of humour left. "Now that I almost got rid of mine, we don't need you to get one now, do we?"

Knuckles finally nodded and turned to walk back to the hotel they stayed at for the night. "Guess you're right."

* * *

"This is our lucky day," Rouge whispered to Omega from where she was lying on her stomach on one of the hills around the base, observing the entrance.

The door had just opened and a bundle of robots, followed by their egg-shaped creator in his flying mobile got outside. Just a few meters behind followed another group of clumsy-looking machines that shoved a plane-like thing between them. When they had brought it outside, the robots returned inside and the door shut behind them, while Eggman's vehicle and the little plane took off in opposite directions to vanish in the darkness of night.

Rouge turned to Omega again. "The boss is not at home tonight. This will make it a lot easier for us." She stood up and started walking down the small hill towards the well-hidden portal. Its color fit perfectly into the rocks around and especially in the dark of night nobody would have guessed that behind it a huge complex of underground labs, factories and computer rooms was all-time busy.

"The probability that subject Shadow was located in the aircraft is calculated to be approximately 70 percent," Omega informed her about the result of a just finished calculation.

The bat looked back to where the plane had disappeared. "I wonder where Shadow's going. And what he's up to."

"Your observations of Shadow's characteristics imply that Eggman is controlling his actions. Result: the hedgehog unit is incapacitated to achieve a sense of awareness of his direction of movement and the form of activities he performs at that place," Omega noticed neutrally.

Rouge sighed. "Of course you're right. It's just hard to believe that…"

"Your optical percipience proved it. Mistrusting your own observations is not logical."

The white bat sighed again. "Forget it."

"This unit contains a highly developed memory core. I do not forget," Omega snarled.

Rouge shook her head and was very glad that they reached the door at that moment and this useless discussion was interrupted. She typed the code to open the hidden portal they had taken from the patrol robo's databanks into a panel camouflaged under a small stone and the door slid opened. The duo cast a sharp glance around.

"No other units in reach of sensors," Omega declared.

Rouge nodded and the two entered the base.

* * *

They had just rounded a corner and Rouge almost shrieked when Omega's invisible robot claw suddenly grabbed her and pushed her back. "A patrol is approaching," the normally red robot explained quietly.

Rouge quickly beat her wings and fluttered up to the corridor's ceiling. She crouched down on a large tube and froze, watching the six Eggrobos slowly walk closer.

Their hands holding a stick that looked like a lance, they stomped in a formation of two lines of three machines along the corridor, their feet creating a deep clang-clang-clang sound on the polished ground.

Rouge narrowed her eyes. Somewhere down there Omega was standing, not visible to her eyes and as the fleeting contacts with Eggman's machines in the last days had proven, neither to the robots' sensors. But the group filled almost the complete space the corridor offered and Omega was not exactly small… If one of them ran into him…

Just as the thought swam through Rouge's head a metallic crash came from below and the right robot in the first line seemingly ran into a wall of air, causing its counterpart that followed behind to crash, too. The other four robots walked a few more steps before noticing that something was not the way it ought to be here and stopping.

The two Eggrobos that had run into Omega stiffly stood back up and then all six machines stood, turning around, their eyes blinking wildly. Rouge held her breath.

Luckily, and as if to prove the bat's opinion on most of Eggman's inventions being not exactly smart, it took about a minute of walking back and forth and scanning their surroundings before the robots returned to their default formation and continued their walk, the sounds of their metal feet slowly receding.

Rouge gasped. "Phew, that was close." She leaped down from her tube and looked around. "Come on, let's go."

"Affirmative," Omega replied and Rouge jumped to the sound of his voice directly behind her. She really needed to find a way to reverse this invisibility or she would go nuts sooner or later.

* * *

The wind tore strongly at Sonic's quills and the hedgehog reached to pull the knot in his scarf a little tighter to prevent it from getting ripped away. Looking back up, Sonic scanned the area in front of him. The sky above was a pale grey and the winds were blowing snowflakes around like leaves in autumn. They were walking up a gentle slope with a few deeply snowed in trees from time to time. Aside of the now invisible path, a deep gap had been torn into the mountain's flank, about fifty meters deep and as broad. It offered a great view on the valley beneath them and the shapes of higher summits in the distance that looked blurry through the curtain of falling snow.

Behind Sonic, Knuckles and Tails stomped through the ankle-deep snow. The small fox was wearing a dark green sweatshirt against the cold winds and together with Sonic's blue and Knuckles' bright scarlet fur colors the group formed the only dots of color in the whiteness around.

They had been hiking for hours already and were making good progress so far. The only problem – if it was worth being called one – was the constant snow fall, but considering the weather catastrophes that had taken place in other Zones on the planet during the past days, constant snowfall seemed pretty natural at this place. Sonic secretly wondered when it would get worse again, since the comet had crashed yesterday in the late evening, everything was calm. Too calm for his taste.

The hedgehog was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of engines somewhere above and behind him. He stopped and craned his neck upwards, squinting into the snow-filled sky. The noise quickly grew louder and Sonic finally spotted a small plane. Its speed stirred up the snowflakes around its wings.

"What's that?", Knuckles shouted over the noise and the storm.

Sonic turned around to him for a second. "A plane, Knuckles. You know, a nice flying thing?"

"Urgh," Knuckles grunted in annoyance and looked back to the plane. "And whose is it?"

Sonic also turned to the plane again. Just in that moment it softly came down on the plain ground of the snowfield in front of them and the sound of its engines died out. "I guess we just go and take a look!", Sonic shouted and started to run for the landing place.

"Sonic, wait!" Tails raced after the hedgehog and Knuckles had not much choice but to follow them.

Sonic reached the plane just in time to see a small door at its side open up and a lone figure hop into the snow, standing still where it had landed. The blue hedgehog skid to a stop. "Hello! What are you doing around here?"

He didn't get an answer, but the newcomer moved slowly towards him, his outlines getting clearer as they were peeled out of the curtains of snowflakes and Sonic recognized the sharp forms of hedgehog quills. He took a small step backwards. "Ehhm… Shadow?"

Still no reply, but by now the black hedgehog was close enough that Sonic could see him. He was staring straight at Sonic, his red eyes fixed expressionless on the blue hedgehog, his movements rhythmic and almost stiff, as if he needed to think about every step before he took it. A weird sort of helmet was locked firmly around his head, small electric lights on it blinking frequently.

"Eh… Fancy hat you got there, Shadow," Sonic started nervously. He really didn't like Shadow's look. "Umm… You see, I'm not still mad that you threw me in the water… you really couldn't know… Oh, yes, Rouge searches for you… Shadow?"

The black and red hedgehog had stopped about a meter away from Sonic's position and now stared at him, but remained silent. He had not moved a single muscle of his face and his eyes looked completely empty. Hard and stoic they stayed fixed on Sonic without truly looking at him.

Tails and Knuckles had finally caught up with the blue hedgehog and now stopped at his sides. Tails looked at Shadow in open surprise and Knuckles fisted both hands. "You know, you almost killed Sonic back there?! What did you think you were doing?!"

Shadow just stared, but a few lights on the helmet blinked faster. His left hand lifted a small gun.

"Hey, what's that about?", Knuckles shouted and instinctively braced himself.

"Enemies detected," Shadow said tonelessly, "Order: destroy." He pointed the weapon at Tails. The fox stared at him with wide open eyes, shock and surprise stunning him in place.

Shadow fired with a bang that echoed from the mountains around.


	12. Snow Fight

**Snow Fight**

Tails squeezed his eyes shut, fully expecting the bullet to smash through the bones of his skull.

But the expected pain never came. "Tails! Watch out!", Sonic shouted and Tails was thrown aside into the snow. His eyes shot open and he looked into Sonic's green ones.

The hedgehog had already grabbed him again and put him back onto his feet. "Quick, Tails, get up!" Sonic span on his heels, spotting Shadow still pointing the weapon at them. Without a seconds thought, Sonic leaped at him and plunged bodily into his black counterpart.

The two hedgehogs rolled through the snow for a moment, then Shadow managed to get a good grip on Sonic's arms and the blue hedgehog found himself thrown against the side of the plane.

Sonic struggled back to his feet, but froze when the gun was already on his chest.

"Destroy," Shadow said as flatly as before. But before he could shoot again, a pair of white-gloved fists from behind grabbed under his armpits and hurtled him a few meters away.

"Phew," Sonic let out the breath he'd been unconsciously holding.

Knuckles just gave him the briefest of nods and prepared to leap after Shadow. But the black hedgehog was already standing again, straightly upright.

Sonic and Knuckles jumped to tackle him as if they'd planned the move already. Shadow decided to take on Sonic and turned on the spot. Reflexively Sonic dodged the next shot almost at ease and watched how Knuckles slammed his fist into Shadow's side.

The black hedgehog simply stood back up as if it had been nothing, in spite of the bloody trails Knuckles' spiked namesakes had left on him. He lifted his gun back up, movement not betraying the slightest of pain. "Destroy," he declared and started to fire wildly at the three friends.

Tails quickly whirled his tails and ducked for cover, while Sonic just ran out onto the open field. After sending a few last shots at Knuckles, who dived into the snow, Shadow skated after Sonic. He shot a few more times, then the gunfire stopped.

Sonic turned over his shoulder still running and grinned at the sight of Shadow throwing the gun away. Sonic stopped. "Empty, huh?"

"Destroy enemies of the great Eggman Empire." The lamps on Shadow's helmet blinked wildly and he jumped at Sonic, curling into a spin.

Sonic dived aside lightening-fast and send a kick at Shadow as soon as he came back down. The force of the blow knocked the black hedgehog to the ground, but he stood back up without even shaking himself once. Just when he wanted to go for Sonic again, Knuckles stepped up behind him as if he'd grown out of the snowy ground and caught Shadow in a head-lock.

While Knuckles held him more or less still, Tails and Sonic stepped in front of him and the blue hedgehog tried meeting Shadow's eyes. "Hey, what's wrong with you?!" He waved his hand once in front of Shadow's face. No reaction, he just continued to stare at him.

Suddenly the black hedgehog jerked his head backwards, knocking a surprised Knuckles tumbling and holding his forehead. Even before the echidna had a chance to recover from the hit, Shadow had taken advantage of his free space and smashed into the unprepared Tails with a spin.

The fox yelped and jumped out of the way, the first seconds almost missing the sharp pain in his upper arm as Shadow's quills, as sharp as Sonic's, cut through his flesh, but it hit eventually and he dropped to a crouch and grabbed his arm, from the corner of his eyes seeing Sonic leap at Shadow and seizing his legs, both of them crashing into the snow once more.

Rolling over, Sonic was on his feet again as quickly as Shadow. This was sick. Now matter how hard they got him, it didn't seem to have the slight bit of an effect on his fighting. He seemed completely oblivious of the pain. And this weird helmet…

Sonic's train of thoughts was interrupted when Shadow stopped chasing him suddenly. For a moment he stood completely still and Sonic's eyes widened as he saw Shadow's hands fisting. He knew the look of the black hedgehog summoning a chaos spear. And the last one he'd met had really hurt.

Dropping to a tense stance and sharply watching Shadow to know the right moment to leap out of the way, Sonic stood and waited. But there came no lance of brightly glowing energy. Shadow clenched and unclenched his hands, his helmet blinking so brightly now Sonic thought it could explode any second.

"Error. No chaos energy accessible," Shadow declared. For another moment he stood utterly still and silent, then he suddenly jolted forwards, knocking his shoulder against Sonic's ribcage. "Destroy enemies…"

Sonic staggered backwards, rowing his arms to regain balance. He put a foot behind himself to steady his stand – and yelped when there was nothing to stand on. Reflexively Sonic span round to look why there was nothing and in the same moment cursed himself for doing it. The fast movement completely upset his fragile balance and he toppled over the edge of the gap they'd been walking along for hours already.

For a second Sonic couldn't move, he just saw the dizzyingly blurry ground far below him. Then survival instinct kicked in and the adrenaline hit him like a hammer. He reached out for the rapidly vanishing edge and his fingernails dug into the icy ground. A jolt ran through his entire body as the short fall ended abruptly.

Sonic took one deep breath and pulled himself up, but in the very second his head stuck over the edge, a hard kick was planted into his face. He fell backwards again and barely managed to hold onto the cold piece of ground he hung on as colourful stars flashed through his head. Squinting up through a haze of pain and confusing lights, he glimpsed Shadow's foot preparing for the second kick that would knock him down completely. Sonic yelped, but instead of hitting him again, Shadow was suddenly gone.

Tails tackled the black attacker to the ground, crouching on his chest, but as much as Shadow's movements were unfamiliarly stiff, his eyes seemed as quick as ever. They locked on the lines of blood that darkened the fur on Tails' upper arm and the drops of red liquid falling from his right elbow. Shadow's hand moved and with a startling strength squeezed at the open wound.

The two-tailed fox bit his lip against the scream that threatened to leap into his throat, but the pain loosened his own grip, and being the much stronger one anyway, Shadow pushed him off.

For almost two seconds he stood over the fox sitting in the snow and holding his injury and Tails waited for the next attack, but Shadow was pushed aside when Knuckles crashed into him full-tilt and clung to his back. Shadow staggered and would have almost fallen over from the weight of the angry echidna on his back, but he kept his footing.

"Leave Tails alone, you –", Knuckles growled, managing to get a hold of Shadow's right arm. The moment the echidna's eyes left the black hedgehog to check up on what his two friends were doing lasted only a second or two, but Knuckles quickly realized it was a bad idea when Shadow proved something Knuckles knew from fighting Sonic too: He moved faster than him. In a movement much smoother than the ones before Shadow's body jerked to the side and his elbow forcefully met Knuckles' stomach, causing the echidna to choke on his breath and release the black hedgehog completely as he doubled over.

Ignoring him, Shadow turned around and seemed undecided whether to go for Knuckles again or Sonic trying to climb over the edge. The seemingly rather slow thought process was rudely interrupted when he was hit on top of his metallic helmet by a handful of compressed snow.

Tails hovered a few meters above him and now threw the second snowball.

"Be careful, Tails," Knuckles shouted, watching from the edge of his vision how Sonic pulled himself back up and crawled away from the pit before standing up.

"He can't fly. And as we've seen, his chaos spears don't work." Tails stopped throwing snowballs at Shadow, seeing that Sonic had made it to safety.

Shadow stood still, staring up at Tails unable to reach the flying fox. "Chaos attacks failing," he said. "Outnumbered by enemies. Conclusion: Interrupt mission and wait for more appropriate conditions." He turned and quickly skated back to his plane.

Sonic raised his eyebrows, not bothering to try and follow Shadow, his knees still feeling rather weak. He just watched the plane lift off the snowfield. Tails landed at Sonic's side, shielded his eyes from the pale sun and watched the aircraft disappear behind the summits and the clouds caught around them.

"That was scary," the fox said, holding his left arm tucked against his side, a shudder running down his spine. "What did Eggman do to him? Shadow was working with him anyway. Sonic?"

"I don't know, Tails. I don't know." Sonic's eyes remained in the sky although he couldn't see Shadow's plane any longer. He shook his head slowly. "But he won't be getting away with it."

"That's one thing for you to say, Sonic," Knuckles remarked as he stepped up to his friends. "I mean, he tried very hard to finish us off this time. And it was the second time in less than a week he almost killed _you_. If it wouldn't have been for Tails..."

Sonic turned to the echidna. "It's not his fault. I guess we all agree that Eggman uses that helmet to control him. He was acting like a robot. Lucky for us he was also fighting like one and wasn't creative enough to know how to deal with the lack of chaos powers."

"Hmm." Tails rubbed the toes of his left foot along the snowy ground, looking at the line he drew. "That was horrible. Nobody should do anything like that to a living being. It's just... it's not right, it's..."

"Against every dignity of creatures, against life itself," Sonic continued and his green eyes narrowed, his voice carrying the undertone of thunder. "No matter if Shadow is our enemy or not, Eggman will pay for this. Count on it."

Tails and Knuckles just nodded. For a moment all three stood in silence, occupied with uncomfortable thoughts.

"Okay, let's go," Sonic finally said. "What's up with your arm?", he continued, finally focusing on Tails.

"Shadow spindashed me," Tails explained, trying his best not to sound whiny.

Sonic's eyes darkened a little. "And Eggman will certainly pay for this too."

"Let me look, Tails, okay?" Knuckles reached to pull Tails' hand off away from it.

The fox nodded a little and watched the echidna pull the torn sleeve of his pullover away to get a look at his bleeding arm.

"You were lucky," Knuckles noticed. "He just grazed you. It should stop bleeding in a little while."

"Will you borrow Tails your scarf?", Sonic asked while he took off his own. "We need something for bandages."

"And now it's also Shadow's fault you two get cold." Tails smirked sarcastically.

Sonic smiled, ruffling the fur between Tails' ears while Knuckles applied the makeshift bandage. "Don't worry about that, little bro. You saved our lives. We can take a bit of snow, right Knux?"

"I don't mind at all," Knuckles quickly assured the fox. "You were great, Tails."

Tails beamed proudly, seeming to suddenly grow a little and his arm didn't hurt that much any more; but he still eyed the green and yellow tissue around his arm skeptically, not really sure if it would help at all. But Knuckles seemed pretty sure it would eventually cease the bleeding and the echidna almost always knew what he was talking about. "Do we go on now?", the fox asked, hoping to get the topic changed as he slowly started to feel better and found he didn't want to be babied by the others.

"Of course, big guy." Sonic smiled and winked at him. "We were just waiting for you."

* * *

_Blue and lilac sizzling bolts shot out of the walls' structure itself, meeting in the center of the corridor and closing around Shadow's body. The black hedgehog glared angrily, wriggling and struggling in vain effort to get out of the grip of the force field, but the sizzling restraints around his body held him firmly in place._

" _Isn't it funny how easily a person widely believed to be the 'Ultimate Lifeform' is so predictable? I knew you'd come to see if I really have secret data I copied from the Ark's mainframe that contains information about the cloning project with Black Arm DNA." Eggman laughed shortly, his floating mobile just a few secure meters away from Shadow._

" _And? Do you have that data?" If looks could kill, the human scientist would have been toasted now._

_Merely smirking, Robotnik leaned back in his seat. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't…"_

_Shadow grunted. "Go to hell, Eggman." Though having his arms pinned to his sides, the black hedgehog's hands fisted, a light yellow glow starting to radiate from between his gloved fingers as he summoned a Chaos Spear._

" _No, you do. And I am the one defining hell here." Robotnik lifted his hand above his head, his face a strange combination of anger and enthusiasm as he forcefully hit a giant red button on his dashboard._

_Extending from the ceiling and tilting towards the trapped hedgehog, the tip of a large metal stick homed in on Shadow, starting to glow and give out a loud hum of building energy. It released like a giant spark plug, a bolt of plasma lightening colliding with Shadow's body._

_The complete corridor flashed in blinding brightness as the blow of Robotnik's machine came together with Shadow's just about ready Chaos Spears, the scream of agony was reduced to almost silence in the bang resulting of air being heated and expending, and then cooling back down and compressed again in less than three seconds. Electrical system momentarily weakened by the surge of energy, the picture was unclear and the lighting flickered._

_Slowly Robotnik rose from where he'd shielded his eyes and ducked for cover behind the dashboard of his mobile, overlooking the mess around. The blast had destroyed both the force field generators and the energy cannon, torn holes into the floor and melted right through the walls. In the midst of it all lay Shadow, right were the collapsing field had released his body._

_Robotnik briefly consulted his computers, then waved at two of the robots that had come up behind him, watching them grab Shadow's limp form and carry him off._

" _A satisfactory result," the human could be heard saying. "Not quite according to my plans, but satisfactory. Now if my work on the mind control goes as calculated, I will have an unbeatable weapon in no-time." Laughing and obviously pleased with himself, Robotnik turned his floating vehicle around, leaving just the picture of a deserted battlefield behind._

The rest of the file was statics on her TV screen.

Rouge shuddered. Again. "Satisfactory result," she muttered, not sure which one of disgust, anger, hatred or sorrow mostly played in her mind while remembering what she'd just seen. Also – again.

It was about the fifth time she looked at the video. Rouge and Omega had successfully sneaked into Eggman's computer rooms last night and simply copied all data that concerned Shadow. There were two more clips that showed how Eggman had put a mind-controlling helmet on Shadow, and a file containing technical data on this device.

The white bat ground her teeth. If she got her hands on that Eggman he should better have prepared for a series of serious trade-mark kicks with iron tipped boots into his ugly face…or some other tender spot.

But besides Rouge's flaring anger at the human robotist, their trip had been successful… in a way. They knew now how Eggman had caused Shadow's memory loss and how he'd designed the helmet he used to make him a mindless machine. Now they just needed to find a way to get it off him without gravely damaging his brain…

Rouge sighed and rested her chin on her hand. She had no idea how to do that, and so far Omega wasn't much of a help as his best idea yet contained storming Eggman's base and blasingt everything there to smithereens. Rouge doubted that could be the way…

But it was so very tempting.

* * *

"Phew," Sonic whistled through his teeth as he stood on the edge of the cliff, the same one he'd almost fallen off during the fight with Shadow, but the gap in the mountain was not as wide here. The past hours had brought them some hundred meters of extra height.

The path continued right-hand, following a half-pipe shaped way further up the mountain, clearly a way the melting water in spring had formed on it way down to the valley. If that was correct, the cliff he stood at must form an amazing waterfall then.

Sonic turned back to his friends. "I guess at other times of the year we couldn't stand here without getting wet."

Knuckles' gaze followed the half-pipe shape upwards the slope. "Bet on it."

The three friends slowly started to walk upwards. Sonic itched to be running, the pace was far too slow for his taste. The others seemed not really annoyed by it, so the hedgehog tried to stick with their pace, but was soon several meters ahead of them.

The thick layers of snow seemed harder here, his feet didn't sink in much. Generally, it made walking more comfortable. And faster.

Sonic hopped up a small hill of snow – and ended up with both feet stuck in almost knee-deep snow. He struggled to free himself, hearing the laughter of his friends from behind. Finally managing to get out, Sonic turned over his shoulder, grinning and about to give some sort of comment, but was suddenly knocked off his feet.

Crouching on all fours, the hedgehog looked back towards the others. "Watch out, guys! Earthquake!"

Tails was already sitting on the shaking ground. "The snowstorm from earlier this day couldn't stay the only mess..."

"I told you – whoa!" Knuckles tumbled, both arms stretched out in vain attempt to stabilize himself. But so far he was the one still standing... "Oomph!" Correct that: had been standing.

And suddenly the shaking was over, as abruptly as it began. The three friends drank in the silence; it seemed as the very nature around itself was glad it was over.

Knuckles crawled to his feet and started to brush the snow out of his bright red fur.

Tails had grabbed both of his twin tails, working white pieces of the ice out of them. "Everyone okay?"

"I'm great," Sonic replied, already standing. "I guess that could have been far worse."

A deep sound like thunder roared from the slope behind him and the hedgehog slowly turned around. His eyes shot all the way open.

"Like that?", Knuckles called from below.

Sonic didn't answer. His gaze was locked onto the cloud of dust that clung to the hill. Beneath it, the whole mountain seemed to come crumbling down. A white wall rolled towards them, swallowing up rocks the size of small houses, the noise increasing the closer it got.

"Guys...", Sonic started slowly, only to shout the next word. "RUN!"

"Great plan!" Knuckles span on his heels and followed the hedgehog's advice.

Tails trashed his namesakes for extra speed, quickly getting ahead of Knuckles as they tumbled downwards back into the half-pipe of the frozen riverbed.

Sonic paced himself to stay behind the two others, he could have been already miles ahead, but he didn't want to leave them alone. Knuckles was more sliding than running on the snowy ground, Tails at least didn't have to bother with the slippery ground, he was already flying.

The fox spotted the golden glitter from the very edge of his vision. Spinning round, they seemed almost to be calling him, offering to ease his pain and increase his chances in that race for life. Instinctively he changed his direction slightly to the left wall of the pipe and slithered into the line of rings. The moment he touched them, he was hit full tilt by a feeling of everything turning upside down and his vision filled with colorful lights. Confusing. Dizzying. He didn't even notice falling nose-first into the cold snow.

Sonic stared at the little fox going down suddenly; he had watched his little extra trip sideways into the rings. They appeared erratically all over Mobius and disappeared just as mysteriously as they came. Nobody knew how and why. But Sonic knew they were useful and able to heal almost every kind of injury. It was clear why Tails had taken the chance to get some, but not why he didn't run any more. Something was definitively not right.

Sonic skid to a stop aside of the fox, throwing a mass of snow around both of them as he did. "Tails! Hey Tails, what's up?!"

No answer. The two-tailed fox hunkered in the snow and didn't move.

Knuckles had noticed his two friends had stopped and was on his way back. "What's taking you?!"

Sonic threw a hasty glance back. The wall of snow was closing in... "TAILS!", he shouted, grabbing the fox' shoulders and shaking him as hard as he dared.

Tails' blue eyes looked up at him, blinking slowly, and he lifted his hands in front of his face as if searching protection.

Knuckles had reached Sonic's side. "Sonic, what's wrong?! This isn't the time for a picnic!"

The hedgehog shook Tails again, earning a weird strangled sound. "Okay, this is no use." He grabbed the little fox boy at either sides and pulled him to his feet. A look back at the snow let Sonic gasp and with a quick decision he looked at Knuckles. "I'll carry him. Run!"

"Sure..." Knuckles' eyes flashed between the avalanche closing in and the strangely unresponsive Tails with an expression of worry.

"I said _run_ ," Sonic told him and watched the echidna finally turn around and skid down the slope. Lifting Tails up into his arms, the hedgehog span around too and ran.

The noise of an incredible mass of snow and ice racing down the steep slope followed him closely and Sonic sped up his steps as much as he dared, his balance fragile as he was holding Tails and therefore unable to stretch out his arms at his sides to stabilize himself everytime his feet threatened to slip away under him. By now he was fast enough not to handle the turns without going up the sides of the half-piped riverbed. Sonic narrowed his eyes in concern. A little faster and he would be shooting out of it. And without his feet touching the ground any longer... he would not only hurt himself but Tails too.

His feet gliding weirdly on the snow and almost tripping him up again, Sonic glimpsed the end of the riverbed. He ran now as far to the right as he could. It would be a tough angle anyway. The soles of his sneakers were covered by a thin layer of ice. During the fight with Shadow, his quick running feet had melted the snow he ran on, then later it had frozen again and was now replacing the usual bit of friction he had on the ground with a complete lack of any friction at all.

Sonic waited to almost the last possible moment, then started to turn left, his right arm pressing Tails against himself and his left hand ending up in the snow as he slid around it.

In front of him Knuckles had gotten caught in snow with the tip of one foot when he tried to run faster, and for a moment the echidna lay on the ground, staring stunned at the approaching wall of hungry white stuff, ready to swallow a little echidna in no-time...

"Get up, you idiot!", Sonic shouted, snapping Knuckles out of it.

Jumping to his feet, the echidna reached for Sonic's left hand as the hedgehog rushed past him and was jolted along the last few meters. Sonic shot forwards, out of the half-pipe-thing and stopped a few meters away in the relative safety behind a big block of rock that looked out of the snow. Looking backwards he saw the loose masses of snow rushing down the cliff in a weird impression of a frozen and yet very much moving waterfall.

Gently sitting Tails into the snow, Sonic leaned on his knees, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths of much needed air. Not really to recover from the running, more to calm himself down. "Now that _really_ was a close call," he mumbled as he stood back upright, finding Knuckles kneeling in front of Tails and trying to talk to him. It seemed with limited success.

Knuckles looked up and shook his head. "Sonic, he doesn't answer. I'm not even sure if he knows I'm talking to him..."

"Hm." Sonic too crouched at Tails' side and took a look at him again. Baby blue eyes were half closed and seemed to get in and out of focus. He couldn't even sit without swaying. "He looks as if he's drunk," Sonic noticed, waving a hand effortlessly in front of Tails' eyes.

"What happened, Sonic?", Knuckles asked, worriedly regarding the fox.

"I'm not sure. He ran into a line of rings and – bang." Sonic shrugged.

"Rings?" Knuckles' eyes widened. "Rings are chaos energy!"

Sonic turned to him. "You mean..."

"It's possible that they are also influenced by this Anti-chaos." The echidna shrugged. "Did they look different?!"

"Hell, I don't know. They looked gold and spinning, like rings do. And then they were gone with a pling when he ran into them." Sonic ran a hand through his quills.

"What do we do now, Sonic? We gotta help him somehow!"

"No idea!", Sonic snapped, his voice having a slightly hysteric pitch in it. "You're supposed to be Mister I-know-everything-about-chaos-stuff!"

"Oh yes? I have never seen anything like this happen, okay? It's not my fault!", Knuckles retorted giving Sonic a glare.

The hedgehog's ears drooped. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Just worried, I guess. No offence."

"None taken," Knuckles allowed, turning back to the little fox that seemed to be completely oblivious to their conversation. "Tails? Hey! Do you hear us?! Do you know who we are?! Tails!"

The fox didn't answer, instead shifting backwards, and looked between Knuckles and Sonic as if he was suddenly scared of them.

"Let me try," Sonic suggested as Knuckles gave up with a sigh. He looked into Tails' face, trying to meet his eyes. "Hey Tails, someone is trying to steal the Tornado!" No reaction. Sonic frowned. "I thought that could do the trick," he muttered, then lifted one hand, looked at his own glove in brief hesitation before slapping Tails softly across the face.

The young fox stared at him as if he'd never seen something as common as a blue hedgehog before, but Sonic didn't get any real reaction. The blue hedgehog sighed. "Alright, one more idea." He turned to the fresh snow at his side and reached into it. "Sorry Tails, stoned foxes need a good wash." With that, the hedgehog shoved two double handfuls of snow into Tails' face.

Spluttering, the fox leaped to his feet, coughing on some snow that had gotten in his mouth and nose and shaking himself like a dog would have, then stopped in mid-movement and stared at Sonic and Knuckles, turned to look behind himself, turned back and looked completely dumbfounded. "Ow... my head...", he mumbled suddenly, bringing a hand to his forehead.

Sonic grinned in relief, pulling Tails into a hug. "Welcome back to the party, little bro."

Tails blinked. "Eh... What? Anybody so kind to tell me what's going on?"

Knuckles stood up and closely looked at Tails when Sonic released him again. "Tails, how many fingers are that?" He held his hands out at him, causing Tails' face to take on a look that made it completely impossible for Sonic not to laugh.

Reproachfully Knuckles turned to the hedgehog. "This is not funny at all! I just want to know if he's okay! He was very far from okay just a second ago! And all you do is laugh!"

Sonic struggled to stop. "I… I'm sorry, Knux... but… with gloves like yours… counting fingers seems just…"

"Guys? Could you _please_ discuss that later and finally fill me in on what is going on? Where did this avalanche go?" Tails looked between the others confusedly.

"The avalanche went down there," Sonic pointed, "you kinda missed on that 'cause you had to run into some freaky rings and knock yourself into a happy delirium."

Tails' jaw dropped. "Say what?"

"The rings consist of chaos energy and must have been changed as much as the other forms," Knuckles tried explaining the vague idea he'd developed about the events." And when you got into contact with them, they had some kind of, um, unnatural effect on you."

Tails blinked, trying to remember and get Knuckles' and Sonic's explanations to fit in. He shook his head when he failed, then regretted it when the movement increased the headache. He somehow felt as if rudely wakened up from a nightmare. He lifted his hands to massage his temples.

"Tails? Are you okay?", Knuckles asked.

"I guess," the fox replied," just have a headache." He stopped when a thought struck him and he reached for the makeshift bandage around his arm. "But this stopped hurting." He peeled off the scarf-wrap.

Sonic raised his eyebrows. "At least they do still heal your injuries," he noticed. "They just start having weird side-effects."

"That doesn't change that we should stay away from rings from now on." Tails frowned. "We better be careful."

Knuckles nodded. "We don't really need anyone to repeat that."

"It got us into a rather tight squeeze, so we better stay clear of this crap from now on," Sonic agreed.

"Tight squeeze?" Tails frowned. "You care to explain?"

Sonic nodded upwards the hill. "Why not? But we should be moving. We want to reach the hut while it's still light. And Shadow and this little snow festival here delayed us great deal." The hedgehog put an arm around his little brother as they started to walk again. "Glad to have you back, Tails."

"Me too," Knuckles admitted quietly when he followed. Though he wouldn't want to go as far as Sonic and hug Tails, the whole scene had been rather spooky. But considering where they were headed and what awaited them there, Knuckles almost feared it might get spookier.


	13. Constructions and Plans

**Constructions And Plans**

The biting winds whirled small clouds of snow around his feet and seemed to attempt to pull even the last remaining warmth out of his body. Knuckles shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.

Still, his eyes remained on the crater in front of him. The hole in the icy ground was almost three meters deep and about ten broad. In the middle of it, on a tablet of glazing ice that had been formed when the snow melted by the heat of the impact had frozen again lay the erratically shaped, orange stone. Its dim glow painted the whiteness of the surroundings in a faint light. A constant pulsing was coming from the weird-shaped crystal and Knuckles shivered again, but this time not of cold.

The echidna turned to his two friends. Sonic had folded his arms and was looking down on the Anti-Chaos stone as if it was an enemy he could challenge. Tails' blue eyes were fixed on the alien object with a weird mixture of fear and curiosity.

Sonic turned to the fox. "I guess we gotta go and bring your stuff here."

Tails nodded. "Yeah, we better get working."

"But before we get to that…" The blue hedgehog pointed at the orange gemstone. "We should try out if we can move it."

Knuckles blinked. "You… don't intent just trying to lift it and carry it around, do you? Already forgotten what the rings did to Tails back there?"

Seriously, Sonic shook his head. "No, of course not. But it doesn't mean the same thing will happen again."

Before Knuckles got a chance to stop him, the hedgehog vaulted down into the crater and was moving towards the glowing stone – though more slowly and cautiously than Knuckles had expected. Still... "Sonic!"

The hedgehog turned over his shoulder. "What?! In case it hasn't occurred to you yet: We need to get this thing outta here to get it into Tails' rocket once it's ready. We'll have to move it anyway. If it turns out we can't touch it, we'll have to think of something, so we gotta know. Someone has to do the guinea pig, so I decided I'd do it this time; Tails somewhat did the last, huh?"

"You're one careless idiot, hedgehog," Knuckles grumbled, trying only half successfully to mask the mixture of concern and annoyance that played in his voice, but the rest of what he'd planned to become a longer complaint was cut off already when Sonic slowly stretched out a hand and once touched the very tip of his index finger to the Anti-Chaos' surface.

"Hey, at least I'm still alive," he joked, looking briefly at his hand before making a second contact by placing his complete palm on the stone. A visibly shiver ran through the hedgehog's body. "Whoa… It's cold."

"Great news, hedgehog, it's snowing." Knuckles nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. That thing was giving him the creeps.

"No, I mean different cold," Sonic noticed, preoccupied enough to completely ignore Knuckles' comment. "It's only there when I touch this… thing. Strangely, it's not my hand that feels cold; it's more like… yeah, as if I'd swallowed a whole lot of ice cubes and now my guts are all frozen." The hedgehog pulled his hand away and scratched behind his ear in confusion. "It's gone as soon as I let go, and it didn't make me do strange things, right?"

"No, not stranger than usually," the echidna remarked dryly.

Sonic snapped his fingers. "So, the question is: Why did the rings get to Tails that way and this thing here, being the real cause of all that mess, doesn't?"

Tails hopped down into the crater to join his brother. "Well, so far we only know it doesn't do the same thing to _you_." A quick touch of Tails' hand to the stone revealed it also didn't do it to him. "Then I'd say… We cannot interact with it directly, what influences us is only the effects it has on the chaos energy we _can_ interact with anyway."

"Well, that makes this bit easier." Sonic turned to the stone again and grabbed it with both hands now, heaving and pulling. The giant gem didn't move a single bit. "Okay, two ideas. First, it's a lot heavier than it looks. Second idea: it's frozen in place." He turned around to the red echidna still standing at the crater's rim. "How about you get your butt down here and help us out a little?"

Reluctantly Knuckles followed Sonic's request, suspiciously eying the big glowing crystal. His senses were screaming at him from all quarters, but nothing of it was understandable, nothing was clear; it was unfamiliar, strange and very close to scaring him.

Sonic tilted his head. "You okay?"

Knuckles forced himself to nod, taking another step closer to the Anti-Chaos jewel, stretching out a shaking hand in spite of everything his instincts told him to do at the moment. He wasn't sure if he'd made contact at all; all he knew was that suddenly a cold he'd never thought he could feel rushed though him, freezing every nerve, every bone, every cell in his body, and the second he was nothing but a frozen piece of flesh, a loud cry that clearly wasn't his own pierced right through his soul, a desperate cry of sorrow, of inexplicable pain… and loneliness...

...

...

* * *

A stinging smell penetrated his nose, an uncomfortable tickling being his only warning before his entire body jerked with a series of hard sneezes. Knuckles gasped, rapidly blinking tears out of his eyes. "What…?"

"Did you just say something?! Knuckles?!"

The echidna looked up at the sound of Sonic's voice, something in the back of his mind noticed they were inside a room with wooden walls, the air was warm and smelled of a fireplace and a lot of other things he couldn't place, he sat curled up against a couple pillows on a sofa, his head was pounding angrily, and a familiar blue hedgehog was leaning over him with a worried look on his face. "Sonic?"

"Phew." The hedgehog let out a sigh of relief. "It really worked. I didn't believe in it, but it worked." The look of his green eyes dropped down onto a small bowl he held. "I guess this stuff's good."

Knuckles blinked again, his eyes still feeling as if he had some sort of irritant in them. "What's that?"

"Oh, you want to try again?" Sonic held the bowl closer to Knuckles' face. "I thought you'd had enough…"

Carefully sniffling, Knuckles noticed a weird mixture of stinging smells coming from the brownish-green liquid in the bowl. "Get that stuff outta my face, whatever it is!"

Sonic frowned, but did take the bowl away. "I'm not too sure what it is, either. I just read somewhere this could work and then I threw all kind of strong smelling stuff I could find in there." He brought his own nose closer to the bowl and grimaced in disgust. "You're right, it's terrible. I guess I'll get us something nicer, right?"

Knuckles wasn't quite sure if he'd have managed an answer, but Sonic was already gone in a flash of blue. The wind he'd stirred up had not settled yet when the hedgehog returned the same way he'd left, but this time holding two big mugs with something steamy in his hands. With a small smile, he held one out at Knuckles. "Here."

"So, and what's THIS now?" The echidna looked at his blue friend in suspicion.

"Hot chocolate," Sonic replied, sitting down on the sofa aside of him. "Really, it's good. It's tasty. I can't have too much of it, but it's nice and makes you warm. I thought you could use it."

Cautiously Knuckles smelled the steaming liquid. It had to be something sweet. "Why can't you have too much of it?", he wondered distractedly.

"I'm a hedgehog, y'know? Most of us don't do overly well with too much of milk stuff, but a bit is fine." Sonic smiled and took a sip of his own chocolate.

Knuckles blinked again, this time more out of confusion than physical need. Deciding whatever Sonic was getting at wasn't important, the echidna tried a mouthful of the stuff. It really was sweet, and it was nicely warm in his stomach.

"Am I right if I think you don't have a clue what happened back there?"

Looking up at Sonic again, Knuckles shook his head. "No. Everything I remember is cold. And… other strange things."

Sonic raised an eye ridge, but for some reason seemed to have decided to not press any further. "But you're okay now?"

"My head hurts," Knuckles admitted, "but I guess I'll be fine."

Sonic nodded. "Good." He finished his own hot drink and stood up. "I'll go see if Tails needs me."

"What's he doing?"

"Getting started tinkering. We figured we're kinda in a rush to get everything ready and this thing off our planet. Since I'm better carrying you and he's the better mechanic, much better I guess really, I brought you here to have you out of the cold and see if I could snap you out of it." Sonic looked down on Knuckles seriously. "Now that we got that covered… You don't go nearer than two meters to that thing, got it?"

"If I remember correctly, it was your bright idea I should get down there, hedgehog," Knuckles remarked acidly.

Sonic's pointy ears tipped backwards in embarrassment. "Yes, but you didn't say anything against it, did you?"

Hadn't he said he didn't want there? Had he? Knuckles cocked his head, suddenly speechless. Deciding he didn't need to tell Sonic he didn't quite remember what he'd done or said back there, he just shook his head.

The blue hedgehog shrugged. "Thought so. Anyway, don't do anything stupid while uncle Sonic is out, okay?" Knuckles grumbled and Sonic stuck out his tongue before zipping out of sight. Unprepared for it, Knuckles winced at the crashing sound when the hedgehog noisily closed the door behind himself.

* * *

It was a disaster, a complete disaster. Now that his plans for making use of Shadow's incredible powers just seemed to be brilliantly succeeding, an energetic interference from outer space ruined everything.

The first effects this object had had on the interaction of all kinds of chaos energy on Mobius had been scientifically very interesting and offered new make-ups for new _brilliant_ machines.

Even all the unexpected effects on the weather conditions and the environment in general would have been mildly acceptable, but now it was restraining the Chaos Emeralds from giving away their power. Getting a robot-controlled being to access chaos powers was close to impossible anyway, but after Shadow's loss to Sonic and his friends he'd spent a complete sleepless night to fix that. It was a struggle, a struggle between keeping control and not restraining Shadow's unique talents too much; solely robotic beings couldn't use chaos powers, it needed a soul, but too much of a free mind spoiled his plans… Though it had taken hours, now he was finally more or less sure his final goal was in reach through the compromise he'd made, now he could get back to the really important bits.

Research on the changed Chaos Emeralds appeared highly difficult because their natural tendency to warp between places seemed even intensified and absolutely unpredictable. In spite of the name and a behaviour that justified the common terminology, the chaos energy had always followed, at least in certain restrictions, its own physical laws. Laws that greatly differed from all the rules usual matter followed, but its behaviour had never been completely unpredictable. Now, the generally given high entropy of all forms of chaos objects was rising to a point where every law seemed to expire. Now even the usually much more simple structured rings had gotten uncontrollable. A great deal of his machinery was about to lose its energy to run on.

Robotnik sighed. He had decided it was time to change strategies. He'd wanted that new power source the comet offered for himself; it was the reason he had sent Shadow to stop the blue hedgehog and his furry friends after the drone he'd left in the laboratory had told him their plan to launch the mysterious stone back into space.

But even great plans for world domination needed to be thought over sometimes. He would let them do their work. Robotnik smiled and his eyes fixed on one of his numerous screens. It showed eight blinking dots, seven of them forming a big circle around the eighth.

The patterns were unmistakable.

Chaos was the concept the universe was based on. _This_ universe at least. Chaos was its stable condition. Every sort of order automatically was unstable and dissolved itself into chaos once more after a short period of time. As soon as the Emeralds would reach the Anti-Chaos, as the little fox had so fittingly named the object, the problem would be solved anyway. It was still unclear to Robotnik if the resulting effects would leave anything of the world how it was now. Considering the massive power all engaged objects contained… the outcome was likely to blast its way down to sub-atomaric layers.

So maybe better not find out.

Robotnik chuckled. The little fox had made a mistake. The technical skill behind his rocket-machine still was remarkable, but the fox had made a mistake. He had missed on a certain little property of the Anti-Chaos structure and it's interaction with space-time itself. It was not a part of this world. Nothing about it fit properly to this universe's structures. When reaching a certain value of kinetic energy, it would tear a rift into the universe's structure. Robotnik was absolutely sure. Interdimensional teleportation. Uncontrolled, to be accurate. Of course, the fox would never find out. Neither would his friends. They would just think the rocket got too far away.

Of course it was of no matter neither to them nor to him where the asteroid went. It might as well have come from another dimension with an entirely different physical make-up than this one, as all of its attitudes varied so much from Mobius' laws of nature. Compared with every other phenomenon he had experienced before, Robotnik considered it might have its origin in the parallel dimension he had visited some time ago and effortlessly tried getting the Sol Emeralds under his power. The chaos energy's balancing pole was the Master Emerald; the Sol Emeralds were likely to be linked to something comparable. During the time he had spent there, no-one had ever mentioned the existence of such an object. Maybe the connection between the two worlds had been existing much longer than he had thought.

Or the stone came from a completely different place. However the stone had made its way through the gap between the worlds was impossible to tell now. And it didn't matter much. The only thing that slightly bothered the scientist in Robotnik was that he would never know if it returned to its origin, where it had really come from or how it had come here in the first place.

But such a little thing should not be his worry. As long as the chaos energy restored and balanced, the way was free for his plans…

He would wait a few more days. Until those fools had done the dirty work for him and cleaned the stage. And then he would make his move. It would be like going to a banquet and just needing to take all the goodies for your own pleasure...

Maybe... it wasn't a disaster after all.

* * *

The early morning hours found Sonic looking skeptically between the big orange rock and the small gas bottle in his hands and at the blue flame that came out of it. "Are you sure this won't do any bad damage, Tails?"

Knuckles standing on the edge of the crater looked down on the hedgehog and frowned. "Would it be a big loss if it burned up?", he muttered.

Sonic shot him a stern look, but addressed the fox instead. "Tails? Can't it catch fire or something?"

Tails sighed and put his pliers down into the snow. He walked over to the impact crater and looked down on the hedgehog and the big Anti-Chaos in the middle of it. "I don't want you to burn the stone, Sonic, I want you to melt the ice it is stuck in so we can get it out once the rocket is ready to be loaded. Try not to leave too many burn marks on it. Generally, _this thing_ ," he pointed at the orange rock, "is as durable as a Chaos Emerald. It didn't take the least bit of damage during entering the atmosphere or on impact. No, Sonic, you _can't_ destroy it. And now could you get _working_?" Tails turned around and strolled back to the heap of half finished machinery he had been working on, shaking his head.

Knuckles looked down on Sonic. "What's wrong with the guy?"

Sonic shrugged. "If you want me to hazard a guess based on long-years-Tails experience: he's tired or he's hungry and whatever he is exactly building there, it doesn't work the way he wants it to." The hedgehog knelt down on the glazing ice and brought the small flame into contact with it.

Knuckles watched him for a moment, then turned around when Tails called his name. "Knuckles?"

"Yes?"

"Can you," Tails balanced a far too big, convex piece of metal back and forth, "help me hold this?"

"Sure." Knuckles grabbed the thing with both hands and Tails quickly seized one tool for each of his own hands and started an attack on the now defenseless metal. Knuckles watched him for a moment. "What will this become when it's ready, Tails?"

"Energy nozzles. The thrusters." The fox attached another weird looking thing to the piece Knuckles already held.

"The – _what_?" The echidna stared at Tails fixing the new installation with a few screws.

Tails looked up at him and smiled. "That's what makes the rocket fly forwards."

"Then you better make sure it works."

* * *

"Oompf! Phew! That thing's heavy," Sonic pressed out, holding the ropes they had tied around the big stone with both hands. He pressed his feet into the snow and pulled, even as the rope cut into his shoulder.

"Why doesn't it come out?" Knuckles yanked on his rope a few times and the resistance of the rock stuck in the melted ice suddenly gave out, the jolt sending all three of them flying to the white powdered ground.

Sonic cursed and knocked the snow out of his blue fur. "This thing really doesn't want to get out, huh?"

"What are you complaining about? It did finally," Tails remarked and stood back up. "Let's see that we get it up here so we can finish for today."

Sonic and Knuckles nodded and all three pulled the still protesting stone out of the crater. Once it lay aside of them, Sonic looked over at the lower half of the rocket that stood upright in the snow, almost ready. It still lacked a top though, and many other things, and of course the power source. "Now we put it inside and then take break for the night?"

Tails nodded. "We can't work all in the dark here. Let's get it in."

Sonic and Tails tried grabbing the monstrous stone and lift it between them. Due to the weird form they succeeded only at the third attempt and then dropped it once on their staggering way over at the makeshift rocket-construction-set. But finally it rested more or less gracefully where Tails wanted it to.

Knuckles took a few steps further back and massaged his temples. Sonic raised his eyebrows at him. "You okay?"

"Hmm… I guess." Knuckles shot the orange glooming crystal a glare like daggers. He hated watching the others work without helping almost as much as he hated this stupid stone.

Sonic shook himself. "I'm not fond of it either, just so you know. It gives me the creeps." He looked over to Tails. "What now?"

"We just pull the awning over it and see that we get out of the cold for once," Tails replied. He was looking forward to the warm fireplace and some nice snacks...

* * *

Knuckles awoke to harsh shaking. "Knuckles, Knuckles! Wake up, you gotta see this!"

The echidna grunted. It had taken him felt centuries to fall asleep and now he felt as if he'd just dropped off. "What do you want…", he mumbled, sleepily struggling to get his eyes open.

"There's an Emerald out there!", Sonic shouted, but at least finally stopped shaking him.

Knuckles groaned. As if he'd never seen any Emeralds before… He squinted up at the exited blue hedgehog that stood aside of his bed, already wearing scarf and warm gloves and having small ice crystals in the blue fur on his head.

"What Emerald…?" Knuckles slowly crawled out from underneath his covers.

"Chaos Emerald of course," Sonic explained, "if you choose to get technical, the dark blue one."

Knuckles fumbled with his shoes and hid a yawn. "You care to tell me what happened? In a way I can understand?"

"Telling's crap. Get your stuff on, I'll show ya!"

* * *

About five minutes later, Sonic pointed forwards. "See? I discovered it when I went on my morning run."

Knuckles stopped at Sonic's side and couldn't help but stare at the blue Chaos Emerald a few meters away from them. It was hovering in mid-air, as if gravity had stopped to exist for it. Which was almost a normal thing, given Chaos Emeralds. But where had it come from? "What the…"

Sonic shrugged. "I don't know. It wasn't here yesterday when I got up and it clearly wasn't here when we came here two days ago. It must have teleported here last night or something."

Knuckles nodded distractedly, walking around the slowly spinning fist-sized gem. "I wonder why it did…"

Sonic shrugged again. "No idea. I asked Tails but he said he doesn't know; he thought it could be possible that it is somehow coming closer to the Anti-Chaos stone, like a magnet. This was why I woke you up, I thought you could know."

Knuckles shook his head. "I have no idea." He finally turned away from the Chaos Emerald to face Sonic. "Did you touch it or something?"

"No, I thought after Tails' great attempt at collecting rings I didn't need to have my brains sucked out by that thing or anything else…"

Knuckles nodded. "How is Tails doing with his stuff?"

"It looked good half an hour ago," Sonic noticed.

"Let's see if we can help him," Knuckles suggested and turned around.

Sonic looked after the echidna, back at the Chaos Emerald. "Shouldn't we be doing something about this?"

Knuckles rolled his eyes. "And what do you suggest we do?", he snapped.

"Oh we could," Sonic started, then stopped, looked at Knuckles, and sighed. "I don't know. Let's go help Tails."

* * *

It was early in the afternoon when Tails and his two more or less talented aids stopped hammering and looked at their piece of work. The metallic surface of the rocket glazed silver in the sunlight and stuck its shiny tip into the blue sky. It was the first day they could see something besides clouds and snowflakes, as if the very sky wanted to look upon Tails' newest invention.

Sonic knocked his knuckles on the surface of the rocket. It was about four times taller than he was and from the outside nothing betrayed the big object it held. "Are we ready for take-off, guys?"

Tails checked a small handheld computer and nodded. "I guess. Come on." He waved at the others to follow him and they took cover behind a small snowy hill.

Tails pressed a few buttons on his computer and looking over the hill's top, Sonic watched how the rocket's boosters started glowing. "I'm starting countdown," Tails declared. "Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one..."


	14. Chaos

**Chaos**

For a moment it seemed as if nothing would happen and the three of them stared at the rocket, then it lifted up as in slow-motion, seemed to stand still a few inches above the ground for several seconds, then suddenly shot upwards into the blue sky, leaving a long streak of light in its way.

"Hey, Tails! It's working!", Sonic cheered.

Knuckles nodded silently, his eyes clinging to the quickly rising rocket.

Tails looked down onto his instruments. "We're at five kilometres and 643 mph…. 10 kilometers and 1395 mph…. 15 and 2856…. 20 and 3709… 25 and 5089… Congratulations, guys, we're out of the atmosphere!"

"Yahoo!" Sonic gave the fox a thumbs up. "Great job, Tails!"

"Still gaining speed… just as planned." Tails grinned proudly. "Sonic, that thing's a lot faster than you."

The hedgehog shook his head. "No way, _nothing_ 's faster than ME!"

Tails laughed. "I'm afraid that's not true… But it' s good that it is faster than you."

Sonic frowned. "How can anything like _that_ be _good_?"

Knuckles dragged his eyes down from the sky to look at the hedgehog. "The faster it is, the faster we get rid of it. Of course that also goes for you…"

"So?" Sonic grunted and elbowed Knuckles, secretly glad though the echidna was relaxing enough to feel like teasing him. The past days he'd been strung so tight Sonic had feared if he gave him a push he could splinter.

A tiny smile lit Knuckles' face, but he didn't give any further comments. Instead, he lifted his gaze back up at the blue sky in spite of the rocket having already disappeared from view.

A few minutes later Tails looked between his two friends and put his tiny computer down. "It's gone."

"What do you mean 'It's gone'? It can't just vanish!" Knuckles frowned.

Tails shrugged. "I lost track of it. It might just be too far away now. Or something else. It's a strange thing, I have no idea what it'll do."

"Where is it now?", Knuckles demanded stubbornly.

"Why is that important? It's gone from our planet, so what the heck?" Sonic tilted his head at his red friend, casually shifting his weight between his feet.

"Sonic is right. Chill out." Tails smiled brightly. "Mission accomplished I'd say."

The Master Emerald's guardian was kept from commenting on the others' opinion when unexpectedly someone spoke up from behind them. "Oh yes, quite certainly. I am almost tempted to thank you, my little friends…"

All three of them span around. "Eggman!", Sonic shouted quite unnecessarily.

"Correct." The scientist laughed, tossing a small blue gemstone up and down in his hands.

* * *

_Ten minutes earlier…_

Rouge looked down on the snow, her eyes absentmindedly following the line of big footprints Omega left. The bat fluttered aside of him and right now she was really disliking all that snow. The white stuff reflected the sunlight and hurt her night-sensitive vision.

"Why did Eggman need to go up here? Couldn't he head out to a nicer place? Somewhere nice and warm? The _beach_?"

"With the currently stored information it is not possible defining the reasons for Eggman's intercourse to this location," Omega noticed flatly.

Well, Rouge thought, the snow had one good point: she could quite accurately say where Omega was. "Do you think he started that weird rocket we saw a while ago?"

"There is no evidence for that."

"Sure, but it is possible. What can he plan up here with Shadow?" Rouge looked around. "Here is absolutely nothing and –" She interrupted herself at the sight of something glittering right in front of them. "Hey, what could that be?"

Rouge beat her wings a little faster, then stopped and dropped down onto her feet when the spotted object turned out to be the light blue Chaos Emerald hovering in mid-air, about as high as her chest. She walked around it one time, then stopped and scratched her head. "How is it floating?"

Omega had stepped up to her side as his footprints told her. "Prepare analysis," the robot snarled.

Rouge heard the typical sound of Omega's mechanic arms reaching out, then she jerked back in reflex and covered her eyes as the Chaos Emerald suddenly flashed brightly. When she blinked carefully a few seconds later, she jumped again, but this time in surprise. "Hey Omega! Good to see you again!"

The red robot turned to face her, tilting his head slightly aside. "This unit has been in this location with you all the time."

"Yes, sure. But I can SEESEE you!" Rouge pointed at her robotic companion.

Omega raised his hands in front of his optical sensors. "It appears the usual physical state is restored."

"Exactly." Rouge smiled. "Now that we got _you_ back to your normal self again, we should hurry and try getting Shadow back. Eggman's getting away!"

"That is not the case," Omega contradicted and stretched one of his powerful arms out to point behind her.

Rouge turned around and her eyes widened. About two meters away from her and Omega, Robotnik's vehicle floated and the mad scientist grinned broadly down on them.

"What a surprise. Rouge the Bat and that disloyal machine. It's such a small world! What brings you here?" He leaned down a little as if he was truly interested.

Rouge's cheeks slowly turned red with anger. "You! And what you did to Shadow!"

Robotnik chuckled. "You will not stop me. Just as that pathetic blue hedgehog and his naïve friends will _not_ stop _my_ plans from succeeding." He laughed really now. "I'm very sorry, Rouge, I can't keep your charming company for longer, I got some more Chaos Emeralds to pick up." Robotnik sat back upright. "Shadow! Follow me."

Rouge quickly looked around at the mentioning of her friend, only to see him snatch the Chaos Emerald from out of thin air and skate past her, following Robotnik to where his vehicle has just flown off at a passable speed.

" _Now_ it appears the targets are getting away," Omega noticed.

Rouge growled. "After him!" She quickly beat her wings, not wasting the time to check if Omega followed.

* * *

"It was so easy." Robotnik grinned smugly and smiled down on Sonic. "All the Chaos Emeralds got dragged here just for _me_ to gather them at ease. And the three of you were friendly enough to clean the field of the interfering object that came here from outer space and that you called so truthfully 'Anti-Chaos', Tails." His gaze wandered to the fox. "I am truly impressed of the scientific performance behind this operation."

Tails grimaced. "I'd appreaciate the compliments if it wasn't you saying."

Robotnik laughed. "How _un_ grateful of you... But now that you did all this nice work for me and the Chaos Emeralds are restabilising, my plans for world domination will finally come to the end result that is worth all the work I put into them. With Shadow and all seven Chaos Emeralds, I have possession of the ultimate weapon."

"Shadow's not a thing, you cannot own him like your robots," Tails shouted up at him.

"Oh Tails, I can _not_? Just look at him! My brain-controller is my most convenient invention; it makes a creature a great robot. Unfortunately, Shadow is the only one it can work on; an artificial organism reacts less negatively to such interference with its brain work. His genetic make-up _my_ genial grandfather designed allows infusing his mind directly with information. Originally used to teach knowledge... it was not difficult making it commands instead." Robotnik laughed again and pointed to the black hedgehog that stood motionless aside of his small craft. "Shadow? Get that last Chaos Emerald for me and then carry out your instructions."

"Affirmative." The black ultimate lifeform turned and walked a couple clumsy appearing steps away from the group before gathering some speed that activated his airshoes, the awkwardness of his slow walking immediately morphing into an elegant, fluent motion as he skated away to disappear between the snowy hills.

"What instructions?", Sonic demanded, itching to run after him, but before he tried stopping Shadow, it could be helpful knowing what he'd be up to.

Robotnik turned to him, as usually glad to be asked about his awesome plans. With almost childish pride he shifted into a comfortable position in his seat and looked between Sonic and his two friends. "Shadow will take all seven of the Chaos Emeralds and use their magnificent powers to transform into Super Shadow. In that state and controlled by my programming he is a weapon suitable to level whatever town I feel like levelling. I sent him to start a little demonstration of my powers in the cities of the villages in the valley." The mad scientist sat back upright. "As you may understand, I have prepared myself for a good view of this from a first line observer spot. So you will excuse me now." He waved at Sonic and the others as he would wave goodbye to a group of close friends and his vehicle floated upwards into the sky.

"Hey, wait up! I got unfinished business with you! Eggman!"

Sonic turned around to the sound of Rouge's angered calls and spotted her and her robot friend Omega running towards them. "Rouge!", Sonic called and waved her to him. "Eggman turned Shadow into a robot. We gotta stop him!"

"I know," the bat replied, a little breathless. "Where is he?"

"After the last Chaos Emerald. They're all close together here," Knuckles informed her, not really glad to have to tell that bat known for stealing all kinds of Emeralds about anything only _closely_ related to that matter.

Rouge turned to him with a small smile. "Relax Knucky; I promise you can keep all of them if you like. I'm not after jewellery right now. At least, not primarily."

"You're always after something shiny, but Chaos Emeralds are no fancy gems for collars," Knuckles muttered and folded his arms. He was very certain he didn't want to let any of her flirty behaviour get to him. This bat just played with him, and when he let his guard down just a little she'd steal his belongings right out of his hands.

"I came to find and rescue Shadow, nothing else," Rouge said, beginning to look annoyed, the playfully charming smile shrinking a little as she turned to the blue hedgehog. "Sonic, tell your red buddy that I'm not gonna steal his Emeralds, will ya?"

"Guys? Can we clear up on that later?", Tails interrupted, once more finding he was stuck being referee in some sort of useless exchange of words, though this time for once not between Sonic and Knuckles. "Shadow is getting away."

Sonic nodded. "Tails has a great point. Any ideas how we can stop him?"

"We gotta get this helmet off him," Rouge sighed, "but I feared that just taking it off could do some kind of damage; his brain is somehow wired to the thing…"

"Tails?" Sonic turned around to the fox. "If Shadow goes super, can the Emeralds prevent that damage?"

Tails nodded a little. "It is at least possible. In super form Shadow is almost invulnerable."

"Then this helps a lot." Rouge sagged with relief.

"Ehm, if nobody else has noticed, Shadow won't let you take it off without resisting, and charged with all the power of the Chaos Emeralds he could kill you with one blow." Knuckles looked between the others soberingly.

Sonic turned to him. "There is enough power for two."

Knuckles raised his eyebrows. "You don't plan… Sonic, they're not stable yet."

"They are for him as unstable as for me. Maybe with someone to use their power it's safer than without," Sonic pointed out. "Eggman has gone too far. I will not let him get away with this. We have to protect the people he's planning to _level_." Sonic's tone made the word sound like an ugly disease. "And I'm sure you don't want that either."

All of them nodded, even Omega inclined his robotic head.

"Then wish me good luck, getting the Chaos Emeralds won't be easy if he already got them." Sonic shot a glance around, making sure he'd looked into every face for a little moment. "I gotta hurry guys!" The blue hedgehog turned and ran after Shadow, following the trail his skates had left in the snow.

Tails looked after him. "Good luck, Sonic," he whispered.

* * *

The cold winds and the hard steam of air his own speed created felt like biting needles on Sonic's face. He pressed his lips tightly shut and forced himself to breeze through his nose. The air was already uncomfortably cold when standing still, running it felt as if you were inhaling liquid ice.

Sonic slalomed around a few more snowy hills and then found himself on the real glacier. A giant tongue of ice, slowly flowing down the slope, with a thin layer of freshly fallen snow on top. The top layer was as soft as the rest of the snow around, but running across it Sonic could feel the hardness of the glacier below as he slammed his feet onto the ground.

The traces of melt Shadow's hoverskates had left were easy too follow, leading up the glacier in a nearly straight line. And then Sonic felt it.

Felt the chaos energy flash not too far away from him. The blue hedgehog sped up, ignoring the cold and the not really trustworthy ground. He didn't pay much attention to the way any longer.

He mentally reached out for the faint power as he ran, sensing how Shadow drew it too him. Sonic knew the Emeralds held enough energy for the two of them to transform. It had worked before, but he had never needed to fight for getting a grip on it.

He thought he'd had it, several times, could almost feel the warm power flowing in and covering the feelings of the cold surroundings, but his grip on it was fragile and it seemed to be getting away from him even as he neared Shadow's location.

Sonic closed his eyes, forcing all of his concentration into his attempt to pull some of the building power from the other hedgehog. It was there, so close... Sonic took a deep breath as it seemed to flash again and held onto the tiny impression of energy he'd just grabbed. It was like pulling on a wire and crawling closer, and then suddenly it was really _there_.

With a beautiful mess of all seven colors of the Emeralds fluxing in his mind all at the same time, the power crashed over him, the feelings of cold and strain washed away when it overwhelmed all of his senses. For a moment of eternity, Sonic felt like falling, the ground suddenly gone, but then it stopped, leaving him with a feeling of being absolutely weightless, all boundaries of gravity just vanishing.

Sonic slowly breathed again as the first rush receded, his eyes flew open - and widened in the same moment. It had not only _felt_ like falling, it had _been_ falling. He was floating between two rather close walls of ice, glazing and shimmering like wet in the dim bluish light that seemed to come from the walls itself but was just a reflection from above. Below him, the light lost itself somewhere in a deep darkness. A crevice, a gap cut into the glacier.

_That was a close one_ , Sonic thought as he launched himself upwards. The thought of how narrowly he'd been saved from a long fall to certain death was just a brief flicker in his mind, there was so much else to feel and think, there was no space for worries.

The golden glowing hedgehog aimed for the sky and for where he knew as if he could see him Shadow was with the second part of the chaos powers. Sonic didn't need to search. He was one with the Emeralds, and so was Shadow. A bond nothing like any personal relation, but it was there, and if just now, it was strong. Super Sonic didn't even need to waste the moment to look and locate Shadow, he knew already where he was, rushing across the sky not far from him. In less than a heartbeat's time, Sonic was after him, leaving a second streak of yellow behind that painted his wake on the blue sky.

The rushing of wind in his ears was the only thing that truly indicated his speed for Sonic, the biting cold, even the pressure of air against this body was nothing but a far far away memory. Super Shadow's path was a straight line as if he'd planned his course and drawn a line into thin air to follow it now. Maybe exactly that was the case, just that it had been Eggman drawing not Shadow himself.

Sonic accelerated until he reached him and simply launched himself into the silvery golden and red hedgehog, throwing him out of his clearly defined course. Shadow twisted, catching himself in no-time and just rebalanced before he span round to search for the attacker. Spotting the glowing Super Sonic, he shot a series of chaos spears at him.

Sonic skipped through them as easily as if it was slow-motion and didn't bother to look down and see the lances of chaos powers smash into the flanks of the mountains below. He was at Shadow as quickly as he'd dodged his attack, charging a super spin and catapulting himself as a ball of ridged glowing quills into the other hedgehog.

Shadow tumbled out of control for a little moment, just to rapidly regain stability and shoot up at Sonic in a move resembling the one Sonic had tried just a moment before. Super Sonic span aside, turned in a perfect loop and raced at Shadow, plunging into him and both of them crashed into the rock summit of one of the mountains around.

Sonic shook himself once and pushed out of the rock, shooting a brief glance at the two hedgehog-shaped cracks in the wall. This was useless. He had never fought Shadow before when both were super and the last minute had proven why that was an absolute waste of time. One was as strong as the other; a fight was doomed to end as a draw.

Or maybe it wouldn't. He knew Shadow had a weak spot... Dodging Shadow's next attack out of reflex, Sonic quickly turned so he could stay on his heels, then flew upwards and shot down on Shadow, his fists aimed at the steel helmet. The moment his glowing hands connected with it, it splintered into hundreds of pieces.

Shadow stopped in mid-air, as if space and time had been frozen for him. He flickered and Sonic could feel the chaos energy fading from him incredibly fast. He managed to grab him the second his fur was back to the usual black and barely kept him from falling out of the sky. Slowly Sonic descended towards the rocks and snow. Once down, he laid the limp body of the black hedgehog onto a small space of rock. He didn't need to check on him; he could feel that he was alive. Nothing else he could do for him.

… or maybe there was something he could do. Super Sonic smirked darkly, shot a last glance at unconscious Shadow and shut his eyes.

"Chaos Control!"

When Sonic's eyes opened just a microsecond later, he was surrounded by greyish walls inside a corridor lit by neon light. Sonic grinned. "I promised you'd pay…", he mumbled and shot forwards, crashing head-first into a steel portal without feeling the resistance as the material scattered all around him.

Like a golden streak Sonic smashed through laboratories, all kinds of unfortunate machinery in his way being torn apart… or blown to bits as a result of rapidly spreading chain-reactions. Not a single piece of Eggman's base stood a chance against the Emerald charged hedgehog rampaging though its build-up.

Just a minute after his arrival, Sonic broke through the base's roof and rocketed across the sky, the multiple sonic booms he left stirring the clouds in his wake apart. He slalomed through forests and then up into the mountains again, the radiating energy leaving a trace of melt in the snow now only a meter below him. For a little moment Sonic just gave in to the high of having the entire energy of the seven Chaos Emeralds to himself, their warm power flowing though his body like his very own blood. He twisted around a couple of rocks and flew upwards again.

He could already see Knuckles, Tails, Rouge and Omega standing still on the glacier's lower part, not too far from where he'd left Shadow. Sonic was sure the black faker would be fine. He smiled and lowered his flight to get back to his friends, when suddenly a brief feeling of loss, not even pain, cut through the high of power.

It was leaving him. Sonic realized it in the second it already did and a moan escaped his lips when he felt gravity's throes like a weight of tons pulling at him, suddenly the cold winds getting a grip on his body, too. The blue hedgehog found himself tumbling head over heels towards the whiteness below. His mind filling with emptiness, he was not even fully able to hope the snow would abate his impact.

* * *

"You will never get it back, Blaze my dear…"

The lilac princess looked up to her nemesis, Eggman Nega. The tall, fat human had brought the powers of Sky Babylon under his control, and he had stolen the Jewelled Scepter from her treasury. Again. If Blaze the Cat hated one thing, it was repetitions like that.

Her eyes narrowed as she sent Nega a glare. "Aren't you forgetting something?" Had Nega been close enough to her, he would have seen the brief flash of a smirk darting over her face, the closest thing to a smug impression you would ever see one the royal cat's face. The way it was now, he didn't.

What he did see was the bright flash of light around her that got him shielding his eyes and screaming out as he realized what she was doing. Drawing on the Sol Emeralds. A few seconds later, Burning Blaze hovered gently in the air, surrounded by a corona of flames, a tiny, but destructive sun if she put her mind to it, and she _was_ putting her mind to it right now.

Blaze quietly let her eyes roam her enemy and the surroundings. The shield of fire around her didn't hinder her sight; it was her element, her nature. Just about to start her attack, the pyrokinetic cat was held back by something else but Eggman the improved vision of her super form allowed her to see.

The tiny purple gemstones, to be found on many places of her planet, were pulsing. Slowly, so slowly she would have never noticed it without turning super. The purple crystals held magical powers, for them gravity didn't seem to exist, allowing for the construction of floating balloons that would carry you upwards until you smashed the balloon's skin, then you'd fall, but not the gems. How it was possible that there was still a rather large amount of the shiny objects on the planet was a question she would likely never get to answer. If you were close enough to them, you would hear them sing, a small, tingling sound like from a wind chime of jewels.

Now as Blaze stared, they were singing too, louder, more passionate… yes, almost happy. Realizing that made her notice another thing, a thing concerning herself and the Sol Emeralds. Her fire was brighter, not flickering as much, and easier for her to control.

A genuine smile grew on Burning Blaze's face. Whatever it was that had changed, it was a good thing. She was still smiling when she finally addressed her opponent again. "Ready to give back my Scepter?"

Eggman Nega shook his head, his mecha crossing its arms in front of its chest and lowering its head. Fighting stance. "No! Come and get it if you dare…"

A large ball of fire growing between her palms, Blaze's eyebrows lowered a tiny bit.

Five minutes later, the lilac cat picked up the Jewelled Scepter, listening to Nega mourning over yet another loss. For one of the rare moments in her life, she truly grinned.

* * *

"Come on guys, they might need help!" Tails' twin tails twirled nervously.

Knuckles nodded and pointed to where they'd just seen Sonic falling out of the sky like a stone. "I suggest you and me go searching for Sonic over there and –"

"And the two of us," Rouge interrupted him, gesturing to herself and the robot at her side, "go for Shadow."

"Alright," Tails nodded.

"Affirmative," Omega agreed.

"Let's go." Knuckles turned to the left to leave.

"I'd be glad to see you again, boys," Rouge smiled after him.

"Better not. You're only trouble," Knuckles muttered, turning his back to the irritating bat and starting to walk away. "You coming, Tails?"

"Of course," the fox replied as he lifted himself up and hurried to the echidna's side. Behind them, Rouge and Omega took off in the opposite direction.

* * *

Shadow's eyes opened and he found himself staring up into the blue sky. He didn't even try sitting up or do major movement. His head hurt, his entire body ached and his mind struggled to remember what had happened.

Robotnik had betrayed him, oh yes. He'd told him all the time he was his friend, but the only thing he'd wanted was using him. The things he'd been told and that Shadow had been about to take as his own memories were very likely nothing but lies.

But there had been these other people, the pictures of their faces and sounds of their words foggy through the controlling machine around him, but they'd been so strangely … familiar. The white bat and the red robot, not anything like the robots in Robotnik's base he had seen, two others he could remember nothing but shapes about, and a hedgehog, shining gold with the chaos energy, just like he himself.

He'd been fighting the other hedgehog? Why? Shadow blinked and closed his eyes, but all he could recall was the commanding machine and the feeling of pure power that was his and in the same time was not. The last thing he knew before lying here was a sharp pain in his head, the sensation of loss, of the power being drained within seconds, and then it was nothingness.

"Shadow? Shadow!", a female voice rang through his drowsiness and Shadow heard the metallic sounds of heavy footsteps nearing him, but the hands that touched his shoulders only a few seconds later weren't robotic. "Shadow?"

The black hedgehog looked up into the worried face of the bat, and suddenly he knew her name. "Rouge?", he mumbled it.

A delighted smile flashed over her face. "Hi Sugar."

"Omega?", Shadow verbalized another thing flickering in his head and looked at the red robot.

The robot's head made something that could be a nod. "How's your status, Shadow?"

It needed the hedgehog a moment to grasp that he'd been asked how he was feeling. "Oh, I don't know if I feel like anything now. It's all just … weird."

The bat smiled softly. "You remember us, don't you?", she asked, a grade of worry and care on her face the black hedgehog had rarely ever seen on anybody and that strangely barely fit the image he now found himself suddenly having of her. "You're still yourself, right?"

Shadow inclined his head wearily. "I guess so. But right now I don't know anything for sure. I just feel … so tired."

"Shadow requires restoring his power unit," Omega declared and Shadow felt himself smile about the robot's language.

Rouge still smiled, too. "We'll do that."

"We?", the ultimate lifeform wondered.

"Of course 'we'. We're a team. We're partners." She turned to the robot and Omega bent down, as if he'd understood her glance, his metallic arms slid around Shadow's shoulders and under his knees and the limp form of the black hedgehog was lifted up as if weighing nothing.

"We'll handle things," Rouge said, "Partners, remember?"

Shadow nodded briefly and relaxed into Omega's steel grip, exhaustion closing his eyes. "Partners," he mumbled. He could stay with that for now.

* * *

Sonic shook himself and crawled to his feet. As much as turning super felt uplifting like nothing, he hated suddenly running out of these powers and not giving them away on purpose. Right now he felt so groggy he wouldn't even have liked a nice little run... and that took a lot from the fastest thing alive.

The blue hedgehog leaned with his back against a rock nearby and for a moment closed his eyes to try and pull himself together. He took a few deep breaths and concentrated on the sensation of cool air flowing in and out of his lungs. It seemed to help, the worst feelings of tiredness slowly eased out of him.

"Sonic! Sonic!"

The hedgehog opened his eyes to the sound of Tails calling his name and spotted the fox and Knuckles running up the hill towards him. "Hey guys!" Sonic pushed away from his rock and slowly walked towards them.

Tails looked up at him worriedly when they reached him. "Are you okay, Sonic?"

Sonic smiled and patted his head. "I'm fine, little bro."

"Really? No weird feeling? The Chaos Emeralds can't be back to normal so soon," Knuckles noticed and Sonic thought he'd heard a hint of concern in his voice.

"I'm good, really," the hedgehog assured his friends, "I just lost them pretty quickly and pretty suddenly. Didn't really expect it. I would have gone down before running out of energy if I'd known that, but this stuff is good to soften a rough landing." He tapped a foot in the snow with a grin.

Tails finally smiled at his brother. "What happened to the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic?"

Sonic shrugged. "Who knows? And honestly: Who cares? That they are gone is something normal, right? And I think this is a good sign."

Now Tails finally grinned up at him. "You could interpret it that way I guess."

Knuckles looked between the others. "Now what do we do?"

Sonic tilted his head and looked back at him. "That's is a stupid question, Knux. We got unfinished business, don't we?"


	15. Dusk

**Dusk**

Shadow's eyes opened blinded by reddish brightness. Grunting, the black hedgehog turned over in sleepy reflex before hesitantly blinking again to find his vision filled by dark purple. "What the…?", he mumbled and lifted himself up on his elbows, for a moment just blankly staring at the backrest of the sofa he found himself lying on.

The next few seconds had the Ultimate Lifeform looking around in the room. Across of him was a wall full of glass cabinets, their contents twinkling and glittering in all possible colors in the evening light that fell through the big windows. Shadow lightly shook his head at Rouge's collection of gemstones while he tried in vain to remember how and when he had gotten on her sofa. Failing completely, he pushed the lilac blanket off himself with a brief oncome of embarrassment and sat on the edge of the couch. His shoes stood at the sofa's bottom… but where in the world had she put his socks and gloves?

Shadow sighed as he got up and slowly strolled over to the window, taking a short look at the setting sun before walking over to the door. Opening it, the black hedgehog stepped into a not quite well-lit corridor and followed the slight sound of music from downstairs.

He stopped on the threshold to Rouge's training room. From across the room, his hostess smiled at him out of one of the weirdest positions he'd ever seen. The white bat was dressed in a blue top and casual long pants, and currently from her knees on hanging upside-down on a horizontal rod attached to a wall, her feet crossed at the ankles and her hands leisurely behind her neck.

"Hey, Shadow! How're you doing?", she asked without showing any intention of leaving her strange position.

"Fine I guess," the hedgehog replied. "Apart from a few little things like having woken up in your living room without any idea how I got there."

"You entered standby mode during transport," Omega's snarling voice replied out of a corner of the room before Rouge got a chance to say anything.

Shadow felt a smirk dart over his face at the robot's description for 'falling asleep', all the while he found an assuring sense of familiarity sweep over him. "Okay, next question: What did you do to my stuff?"

Rouge grinned charmingly. "Are you familiar with the concept of washing clothes? Your socks reeked, so I put them in the washing machine. You'll get them back in an hour, I promise."

"My socks don't-", Shadow started but stopped mid-sentence when his stomach painfully cramped up with an angry growl and he instinctively grabbed it.

"It appears Shadow requires refuelling," Omega commented.

Rouge nodded. "We'll make some dinner." With one beat of her powerful wings the bat sat on top of her rod and smoothly jumped down to the floor.

Shadow had closely followed her movements, now he frowned and pointed at the rod. "May I ask what you were doing there, Rouge?"

The bat shrugged. "Relaxing."

"You find that relaxing?"

She nodded. "Yeah, it's great." A grin crossed her face again and her turquoise eyes twinkled in amusement. "Maybe you should try that out too."

"According to the anatomical differences between the Mobian Bat that didn't lose the special physical make-up of being adapted to head-down positions throughout evolution and Project Shadow's physiology it is unlikely," Omega remarked.

Rouge giggled. "I guess so." She walked over to Shadow. "Now let's get you some dinner."

"I'd appreciate if it didn't take too long…" Shadow nodded.

The bat raised her eyebrows. "That hungry?"

"Very, yes," Shadow admitted, "but it isn't the main reason. I have some more plans for today."

Curiously Rouge looked at him for a moment and smirked. "Do you mind if I join you when you pay old Egghead a friendly visit?"

Shadow regarded her with just a second of surprise. "No."

"I request to assist the mission as well," Omega put in, his red optics glowing in a slightly deeper shade.

For a moment Shadow looked between his team members and a rare smile spread on his face as he inclined his head at the robot. "Affirmed."

Rouge giggled at the hedgehog-hybrid's attempt adapting Omega's language. "Eggman better find some good hide-out…"

Shadow's smile grew grim, fitting the growl of his voice. "You bet."

* * *

A light breeze caressed through his blue quills and Sonic leisurely leaned his back against one of the ancient pillars on top of the Emerald Shrine. Aside of him, Tails was happily wagging his namesakes. Fox and hedgehog exchanged a bright smile and their gazes wandered over to the center of the round altar's top.

Shining as brightly as ever was the giant form of the Master Emerald. Knuckles still held his hands on it where he'd held it to carry it here and now let out a sigh and dropped his forehead against the green gemstone and the Master Emerald's glow pulsed brighter than bright for a second. Sonic couldn't help the feeling this was its way to say: 'Thank you guardian and welcome back'.

Tails poked his side and Sonic looked back at the twin tailed fox. "We did it!", the kid declared enthusiastically and hopped up, spinning his tails to lift himself and flying one time around Sonic, Knuckles and the Emerald.

Sonic reached to ruffle the fur between his ears when he touched back down at his side. "You say it." He paused for a moment and shot a glance at the setting sun. "Come on, Tails, it's a long way down... and I'm starving. I don't think we're needed here."

Tails nodded and the two turned to get down the stairway, but stopped when Knuckles cleared his throat.

"Guys? Don't."

"Huh?" Sonic turned back around.

Knuckles still had one hand on the crystal surface of the Master Emerald, but he was looking at them instead. "This is…" he cleared his throat again" …this is not thanks to me. Without the two of you, Angel Island wouldn't be floating again now and the Master Emerald would still be in pieces."

Sonic just looked at him and gave him a smile. "Well, it was teamwork I guess."

Knuckles slowly nodded and once stroked over the green gemstone before pulling away. "Guys?"

"Yes?", Sonic and Tails chorused.

"Uum… thank you."

Tails smiled. "We're friends, Knuckles. This is what we do, we help you when you need us."

"You just have the tendency to forget and oversee that," Sonic grinned, playfully blinking an eye at the echidna.

"But we like you anyway." Tails giggled. "Even if it's sometimes hard with you."

"It is?" Knuckles looked between them puzzledly.

Sonic and Tails exchanged a glance and both grinned broadly when they looked back to him. "You wouldn't be Knuckles if that'd change," Sonic noticed.

The red echidna ran a hand through his dreadlocks. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

Tails shook his head. "Don't worry, you're fine!"

Knuckles scratched his chin. "You said it's a long way down?"

"Hmm," Sonic nodded. "If we want to reach Tails' house before tomorrow at midday…"

"I'm not really fond of flying during the whole night," the fox admitted, "I'm kinda tired after all of this."

"I won't throw you off my island if you're worried about that. Those times are long over." Knuckles gave a little smile.

Sonic grinned. "Is that an invitation, Knux?"

* * *

He had to take back his thoughts of just a few days ago. It was indeed a disaster. His beautiful underground base… destroyed by that blue pest of a pincushion! Once more, his plans, his brilliant ideas of a bright future, a robotized future… all gone, vanished in dust and rubbish and smoke.

Robotnik's hand moved to his forehead, slowly, almost unconsciously rubbing the bruise there. Of course, fate had meant business with him today. Not only that he'd lost his main base, no… On his way of retreat to a second, safe and secret hideout he'd built just in case a catastrophe as today came upon him – and, as his earlier life had clued him already, those tended to come upon him good – a group of three had intercepted his way. Shadow, Rouge and that illoyal metal can of a robot, E-123 Omega… and Robotnik had found out very quickly all of them had been in a foul mood.

Maybe the only luck the scientist had today was that he'd escaped with his life, that the Eggmobile's emergency power could carry him longer and higher than that batgirl could sustain flight, and that this failure of his grandfather's cloning work had still been slightly out of condition and unable really effectively use his powers… Though they had been easily enough to smash everything Robotnik had left besides his tiny escape vessel.

Said vehicle now descended with its last power to the ground, rolling and bouncing over a carpet of grass before tilting to its side. Little elegantly dropping out of it like an overripe fruit, the beaten scientist landed on his rear. Slowly crawling to his feet, Robotnik watched the long shadows his tall form threw on the grass. He frowned, the shape of the shadow oh too well reminding him of the name the blue hedgehog had given him. _Eggman_ …

Throwing a last glance onto his out-of-power vehicle, Robotnik started to walk the last part of his way. It was one of the things he hated the most. Useless moving around. Machines were to move, that was their use, their purpose. A genius like him… was to be moved by things of his design.

His machines, yes. But once again in Robotnik's life, they had failed him. Or hadn't they? Once more, a frown wrinkled the tall human's face. Maybe… it had been mostly an interface flaw, a non-functioning of the junction he'd used. The scientist's mind moved back a few years, to the start of his robotics, to the time he'd been using small animal creeps to give power to his machines. He'd stopped this practice after the failure of the early E-series, and the change to a technology free of biologic components had increased efficiency and reduced flaws. No, he had never been lucky with biology, not with natural life forms in general. Robotnik grimaced as the incidence with the Chaos monster turning against _him_ , its master at the time, sprung to mind.

The grimace subsided into a slight look of relief as the entrance of his hideout came into view, offering an end to this unwanted exposure to _nature_. Long fingers in a slightly burn-stained white glove rushed as if automatically over a panel of numbers. Acknowledging the code, the door gave way with the wonderful buzzing of a running device and Robotnik stepped into the small room. He leaned against the wall as the elevator took him downstairs, but directly moved away from it as the doors opened again to reveal a smooth and clean metallic corridor.

The scientist was welcomed by a tiny service robot and directly ordered it to bring him a refreshing drink. Opening another door, Robotnik advanced towards a big desk and let himself drop into an armchair. While he leaned back into the cushioning, his pondering from the way here came back to him.

It was a funny thing how different people's talents were given. His grandfather, always his idol being a great scientist, had been a lot into genetics, a genius at manipulating life forms, yes, even creating new ones. Gerald Robotnik had managed to make a powerful being even out of the strange mixture of Black Arms' DNA and hedgehog genes. An awkward smile tugged on Ivo's lips as he wondered what might have driven his grandfather to choose a _hedgehog_. What an ironic trait of history… that hedgehogs would be the greatest annoyance to his grandson's life long years later.

But he was not like his grandfather. As the latest events had shown him once more, everything he tried that included manipulating life forms was doomed to fail already when he started it. That seemed his fate.

The tiny servant robot clumsily walked up to him, balancing a glass on a tablet. Robotnik smiled, taking the glass before the little thing could drop it and patted its round head. It beeped contentedly before stilling into stand-by.

Thoughtfully Robotnik regarded his little creation. This was what he was good at. His thing were, and had always been, mechanical automatons, electromotive devices of all sizes and purposes. The smiled grew to a grin. Why not stick to what he was good at? Exploring other fields of science had not been the most successful thing… but…

Robotnik leaned forwards, snatching a large piece of paper from the desk. He looked down on the blank sheet just briefly, then grabbed a pencil. Seconds later the blank piece of paper was blank no more as the robotist's mind drew a whole new concept of robots onto it.

New, brilliant fighting machines, metal menaces, walking and swimming and flying pieces of perfection, gears and circuits working together, a harmony of mechanics….

Robotnik laughed, his hand not stopping its feast. It had never been winning or losing for him.

_It was how to plan your REVENGE!_

* * *

Small flames were shining from the pieces of wood, once or twice a minute giving a brighter flicker combined with a light cracking sound and a few sparks would be carried up into the almost dark sky. The western horizon still glowed in dark purple while the eastern part was already completely dark and showing the first stars.

Sonic looked back into their campfire and stretched his hands out towards the wonderful warmth it gave out. His green eyes slowly wandered over the small meadow and a smile spread on his face. To his left side, Tails was curled up on the soft carpet of grass, already asleep, his two tails tightly folded around himself. "I think our little rocket-building genius is tired, huh?", he grinned, looking across the fire to Knuckles.

The red echidna glanced up from the flames just briefly, a small smirk darting over his features at the look of Tails. "He deserves it, don't you think?"

Sonic nodded. "Yeah." The rather large yawn that followed betrayed just how well the hedgehog could understand his little brother. With his belly full and the nice warm fire, he was also starting to again feel the toll the past week had taken on him.

"He's not the only one, is he?" Knuckles gave a small chuckle.

Sonic shrugged. "No." He studied his friend for a moment. "I think we're all a little beat." When Knuckles didn't reply, the blue hedgehog just shrugged again and stretched out on the grass, crossed his hands in his neck and looked up at the sky. "Good night then."

"'Night." Knuckles threw some new wood into the small fire and watched the flames hungrily consuming the fresh branches. His eyes followed the small mists of smoke floating upwards to disappear into nothingness on their way up to the sky that seemed here so much nearer than elsewhere.

When he looked back down, he found Sonic rolling over and curling into a loose ball on the grass as he dozed off. Smiling at the mental note to himself that now it would be _really_ quiet, the echidna took a deep breath of wonderful Angel Island air and his gaze dived back into the fire.

Truth be told, he was at least as tired as his friends, but he wanted to enjoy the first night back home as much as he could. So he sat and stared into the flames, listened to the small sounds of the night-time forest, the tiny, never stopping breeze of wind over the Floating Island that stroked through his long spines… and beyond everything else he could feel the presence of the Master Emerald on the shrine not far away. An all fixed and wonderfully _normal_ Master Emerald…

Eventually even Knuckles allowed himself to follow the directions of tiredness, lying back on the ground and closing his eyes. The knowledge of everything being finally safe quickly joined forces with the relief of the last week's stress easing away, with the nice feeling of soft grass close to a warm fire and with the calming effect of a filled and satisfied stomach. In the last moments of wakefulness Knuckles reached for the soothing feeling of Master Emerald power in his mind, the green warmth from inside softly seemed to fill him, and he took it along into the first peaceful dream in weeks.

_The End_


End file.
